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Book _33AM 


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THE GLORIOUS HOPE 







THE 

GLORIOUS HOPE 


BY 

JANE BURR 

AUTHOR OP "THE PASSIONATE SPECTATOR n 



New York 

THOMAS SELTZER 



Copyright, 1921, by 
THOMAS SELTZER, Inc. * 


All rights reserved 



£)P4. A654182 



PRINTED IN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


JAN -9 192? 




Orr? 



THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


CHAPTER I 

Evelyn Kerwin waved good-bye to “ the crowd ” 
at the little railway station and shook herself like a 
cat after a nap under the parlor stove. After all, she 
had been asleep, if not under, then beside the parlor 
stove for some twenty-two years. Ugh ! How she 
hated that parlor stove with its red isinglass teeth 
eternally grinning at her and her dream. All the 
memories of her life were bound up with that parlor 
stove. As a little thing she could remember being 
bathed in front of it. As a school girl she had 
learned her lessons on winter nights snuggled up be- 
side it, and from graduation day onward she had 
flirted across its grin with the various beaux of the 
village. 

And now it was sold. Tony Crack, the Italian 
farmer, had purchased it. “ Goody, goody, goody ! ” 
she murmured. “ It’s sold ! ” Then she smiled as 
she thought of all the little Cracks being bathed and 
educated and courted in the glare of those half- 
friendly, half-sneering red teeth. 

7 


8 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


Only the tiniest little pull came at her throat as the 
train wound out of Port Illington. More for senti- 
mentality than for any real emotion she wandered to 
the back platform oif the train and watched the tracks 
come to a point and dwindle away like her own past. 

“ Well, that’s over at last,” she said, going to her 
seat and making herself comfortable for the journey. 
“ There isn’t a single thing in Port Illington that I 
want. Thank all the gods, I’m through with it!” 
She folded her veil neatly and tucked it into her suit 
case. Her coat and hat she covered with a cretonne 
bag (stitched up especially for the journey), then 
settling down comfortably against a pillow she 
drooped her eyelids and looked at the snow that bil- 
lowed by in rivers of whiteness on either side of the 
onrushing train. 

Sometimes it seemed to her that the succession of 
mounds were little graves, and she shuddered at the 
thought of how cold it must be under them. At 
other moments the bouncing hillocks were white 
hopes, all virgin pure without any mud spots of dis- 
appointment to tarnish them. 

The farm-houses hurried by, sending out cosy little 
streamers of orange light, but Evelyn knew all about 
the loneliness that haunted the people on the home 
side of those little orange streamers, and her heart 
went out to them. Her heart went out to a farmer 
who spun by the window dangling a lantern from his 
freezing fingers. Her heart went out to the horses 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


9 


stumbling along uncertainly over the creaking road. 
She felt sorry for everything in the world that was 
tied down and could not get away. That meant that 
she felt sorry for everything but herself. She felt 
glad, very glad, for herself. 

There were various reasons why she should feel 
glad for herself. She was so glad that she began 
to sob a happy kind of sob, that came from burying 
a crotchety old guardian and selling all her household 
goods, including the parlor stove with the red teeth, 
for one thousand dollars and a railway ticket to New 
York. 

Rupert Hughes says that for every five minutes of 
the day and night, one girl comes to New York to 
make her life. Nine-tenths of these little heroines 
have never seen Fifth Avenue, or a yacht, or a butler, 
or a glass of champagne, or the ocean, or a person of 
social importance, but if this is true, at least the other 
one-tenth are girls like Evelyn Kerwin, of good edu- 
cation and family: girls who have most probably 
had a Cook’s Tour Abroad: girls who are by no 
means inexperienced, or ordinary, or poor : girls who 
are not satisfied to marry their first beau and settle 
down to the monotony of life in a small town, but 
whose hearts cry out for the chance to get somewhere 
and be somebody. 

A modem psychologist has offered a theory that 
all young things should be pushed out of their homes 
at the age of eighteen. Evelyn Kerwin had waited 


IO THE GLORIOUS HOPE 

four years past the scheduled time. During those 
four years she had twice been on the verge of an 
absurd marriage, but each time some of that glorious 
hope of youth — call it energy, love, passion — had 
whispered things about a great career, and she had 
broken the engagement. So she was still free and 
now, in addition, she was rich in the possession of a 
thousand dollars. Young, rich, and independent, 
she had looked about her for a great career, and it 
had taken very little looking to* convince her that at 
Port Ulington, Wisconsin, she would never find any 
career whatever. 

New York! Other cities are important for this 
or that, but there is only one New York. Chicago, 
for instance, is a place to know. One visits there, 
one shops there. But New York! New York is 
the pot of gold that lures one on to the very end of 
the rainbow ! New York is the dream that slumbers 
in the brain of every imaginative youth in America. 
New York is the top of the world ! There is nothing 
beyond New York ! 

Evelyn knew the Chicago cobblestones by heart, 
and she begrudged the time it took to ride from one 
station to the other. She begrudged the slowness of 
the fastest train she could take to New York. She 
begrudged all the daytime because it dragged, but she 
loved the night because it brought the glory nearer. 

At last the earth that had been like a wedding- 
cake frosted with the January snow, began to show 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


ii 


a dusting of grime. The beautiful rivers of white- 
ness that billowed by on either side, turned black and 
dirty. Tin cans poked up; in a ditch some cast-off 
shoes, still holding the shape of the last wearer’s feet, 
flashed stiffly by. 

Evelyn looked down at her own neatly laced boots. 
How smooth they were! They showed none of 
those hideous lumpy joints that spell drudgery and 
long hours. She felt sorry for those shoes in the 
ditch just as she had felt sorry for the lonely little 
farm-houses a few hours before. She was so happy 
that she felt sorry for everything and everybody in 
the wide world but herself. 

The New York crowds seemed more aggressive 
than the Chicago crowds. Uniformed men tried to 
grab her bags. Boys jostled her. Women stepped 
on her toes. The mass of people swung up the iron 
stairs to the main floor of the Pennsylvania station 
and she swung with them. The back of her skirt 
kept working around in front of her feet just on 
purpose to make her stumble. There was a squeeze 
in her throat and a panic in the pit of her stomach. 
For the first time she was a little awed and frightened 
at her boldness in daring to come. 

“Pm not the slightest bit afraid of anything!” 
she said to herself, and, breathing deeply and throw- 
ing back her head, she mumbled something that she 
dimly remembered about “ The Assyrian came down 
like a wolf on the fold, and his cohorts were gleam- 


12 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


ing in purple and gold ; and the sheen of their spears 
was like stars on the sea, where the blue wave rolls 
nightly on deep Galilee.” 

There was a conquering little turban of purple and 
gold on her head, and she felt a very wolf indeed 
coming valiantly down on the artistic fold of New 
York. 

The second verse of the poem she had entirely 
forgotten — 

“ Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green, 

That host with their banners at sunset were seen ; 

Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown, 

That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.” 

Then the last triumphant line popped conveniently 
into her head — 

“ Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord ! ” 

The mere fact that she had unconsciously twisted 
the meaning to suit her own case in no way disturbed 
her workaday mind. She was far too clever to 
admit publicly that she felt equally mighty with the 
glance of the Lord, but she saw no reason why she 
shouldn’t think it just to herself. It gave her cour- 
age ; it made her thrill with the thrill of “ See the 
Conquering Hero Comes ! ” 

It was five o’clock, and a dark winter night. 
Thirty-Third Street was dingy in spite of its glare 
of electric lights. 

Nothing is so compelling as the first sight of a 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


13 

strange city. One must stop and stare even if the 
penalty be the guillotine. 

Evelyn looked up at a second-story window on 
Seventh Avenue and watched a hunchbacked seam- 
stress cover up her sewing machine for the night. 
Other women appeared out of the dark street door- 
ways, stopped a moment for courage, then drawing 
themselves up tightly, rushed off and disappeared 
into the cold. 

The little hunchback came down and, without even 
a second's hesitation, opened the street door and 
walked straight away into the shadows, her thin coat 
unbuttoned and flying in the wind. Probably she 
courted disaster. 

Little droves of Je wish-looking men, bent-shoul- 
dered and nodding, shuffled along in the melting snow. 
Across the street a gay yellow restaurant advertised a 
seventy-five-cent table d'hote on its painted front. 

Evelyn waited for a break in the flow of vehicles, 
then crossed over and peeped through the window. 
It was all very gorgeous and glittery. People were 
swinging in through the revolving door, and swing- 
ing out were faint whiffs of music and food. 

O for an invisible cap that she might wander about 
looking into windows all night long ! 

“Alone, Miss ? ” asked a sleek-looking gentleman. 

This was so cheap to have happened to her. It 
was like a cheap novel and she wasn't in the least 
interested in that type of literature. She wasn't 


14 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


afraid of him. She wasn’t afraid of anything, but, 
nevertheless, her body trembled and her heart 
thumped, and she felt hanging over her the power 
of broad pavements, tall buildings, rushing motors, 
great cities — something that she had never 
glimpsed before — something bigger and more pow- 
erful than her own desires. 

The uncertainty of things began to smother her. 
She clutched the handle of her brown bag with 
cramped vigor. Inside its darkness, among hand- 
kerchiefs and stockings and lingerie and blouses, 
nestled her letter of introduction to Anna Dickenson. 
Arguing that at least for her the road was friendly, 
she stepped up to a policeman and inquired the way 
to 540 East Seventy-Seventh Street. 

The policeman towered above her like the Charter 
Oak, extending two of its branches for her suit cases. 

“ Did you check your baggage, Miss? ” 

She beamed very charmingly and assured him that 
what he had in his hands was all she possessed — 
lock, stock, and barrel. He must have thought her 
really nice, because he left his post and walked up 
to Thirty-Fourth Street and put her on a cross-town 
car and told her to change to the Second Avenue car, 
and get off at Seventy-Seventh Street and walk two 
blocks east. 

And she was nice in a way, and above the average 
— like brussels sprouts when you think of them in 
a world of cabbages. 


CHAPTER II 


“ Will you please tell me which way is up town? ” 
she asked of an old chestnut man on Thirty-Fourth 
Street and Second Avenue. After he told her she 
stood on the far side instead of the near side, and 
the first five cars slid by haughtily before she discov- 
ered that the slight wasn’t personal. But on the 
whole, Seventy-Seventh Street was creditably reached 
if it wasn’t creditably crossed. 

That swarm of little human beings ! Where in 
God’s name did they come from? Who were 
they? . . . She tried to escape trampling them, 

but invariably she would step aside from one of them 
only to collide with another. 

“Aw, lee me carry yuh baggage, Miss ! Fi’ cents, 
Miss! Lee me carry it for fi’ cents, Miss! ” 

She. was on the verge of yielding, when she hazily 
remembered something about child-labor laws, and 
decided that a young person was more in need of a 
sound back than he was of five cents’ worth of lolli- 
pops. And then they were such filthy children! 
Imagine living with one’s bag after the handle had 
got intimate with one of those germy little squirm- 
ers ! 


15 


i6 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


“No! No! Children!” she said determinedly, 
thereupon expecting them to fall away in Indian file 
to the side. 

Had Evelyn Kerwin known more about mob psy- 
chology she would have broken all the child-labor 
laws on the calendar and risked living with a septic 
bag for the remainder of her natural days. How 
those cut-throats in miniature had loved her the 
moment before! Now as she repeated “ No! ” they 
tore at her coat tails, kicked at her luggage, and 
shouted ridicule in her ears. 

“ Baggage man ! Baggage man ! Adams Ex- 
press Company ! Lady truck horse ! ” 

She was deeply hurt. “ This, then, is the reward 
of altruism,” she murmured, and as a sentimentalist 
walks over an ant hill she marched bravely on, never 
looking back, but hoping that not too many had been 
crushed in her passage. 

It was comforting to talk out loud. “ Never 
mind,” she said, “ I wouldn't go back to Wisconsin 
for ten million dollars!” But inside at that very 
moment she wished miserably that her dead mother 
were rocking beside the old red-toothed stove so that 
she might crawl right under the well-remembered big 
white apron and cry her eyes out. 

In New York, people always live in the last house 
on the block, and (when there is no lift, and the 
mercury is trying to slink out of the bottom of the 
thermometer) on the top floor 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


1 7 

To Evelyn the big East Side tenement was like a 
seven-story monster. The entrance was a huge open 
mouth that swallowed her suddenly, and there she 
stood shivering at the bottom of a grey sky-topped 
well, with four winding outside stairways probably 
leading straight up to the golden streets of heaven. 

The longer she hesitated the more frightened she 
became. She mightn’t have been so brave about 
adventuring if it hadn’t just happened that old lady 
Pritchard had had a friend, Carrie Dickenson, whose 
daughter, Anna, lived quietly at 540 East Seventy- 
Seventh Street in what were called the “ Model 
Dwellings.” 

Of course, Evelyn didn’t know Anna — but then, 
after all, that didn’t much matter, because Anna’s 
mother was Carrie, and Carrie was old lady Pritch- 
ard’s friend, and Evelyn knew old lady Pritchard so 
well that anybody recommended by her was sure to 
be highly respectable and kind. 

Evelyn selected the stairway that included flat 
Fifty-Nine, and began to ascend. She panted and 
climbed, and climbed and panted for interminable 
centuries it seemed to her, and still the card-holders 
on the doors refused to show the homely name of 
Anna Dickenson. 

On the fifth landing Evelyn drew her skirts tightly 
about her and sat down on one of the bags to rest. 
She looked carefully about. It all seemed quite 
clean and nice to the naked eye, but when one con- 


i8 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


siders the microscopic secrets of a drop of ordinary 
water, one can’t be too careful. 

Somebody shrieked. Heads popped out of the 
court windows. Folks grew neighborly in Italian, 
Bohemian, Scandinavian, and Yiddish. It didn’t at 
all matter that nobody was listening. Everybody 
talked. 

Evelyn pressed her hands over her ears. She 
knew there would be a pistol shot or a bomb! But 
nothing happened. Presently the heads all turtled 
back into their shells; windows banged shut; and 
Evelyn, clutching her luggage, started up again. 

At last, like a diver rising to the surface, she 
reached the top floor. There was flat Fifty-Nine 
facing her, but instead of a door-plate with the solid 
name of Anna Dickenson this saucy sign painted in 
orange and vermilion : 

Marj Prouty. 

IF YOU ARE TIRED, SIT DOWN AND REST. 

IF YOU ARE VERY TIRED, 

COME IN AND HAVE A CUP OF TEA. 

No Charges. 

Standing at the door was a lovely little chair of 
Chinese lacquer with a black satin seat embroidered 
in golden pagodas. Anybody might have flitted it 
away on the tip of his thumb, yet it wasn’t even 
fastened to the wall. 

Evelyn's fingers were purplish with cold, She 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


19 


blew on them and stuffed them deep into her pockets. 
Then, as she was tired, she sat down on the little 
Chinese chair to rest. 

Suddenly she stood up and read the sign again : 

Marj Prouty. 

IF YOU ARE TIRED, SIT DOWN AND REST. 

IF YOU ARE VERY TIRED, 

COME IN AND HAVE A CUP OF TEA. 

No Charges. 

It all sounded very sweet and generous, but New 
York hadn’t the reputation for being sweet and gen- 
erous. Besides, Evelyn had read that dreadful re- 
port of the Chicago Vice Committee, and as she had 
a cumulative brain she had pigeon-holed what she 
read. 

So she was just about to descend those many stairs 
and search out the local Y. W. C. A., when the door 
flew open to the music of Chinese jingle bells, and a 
slim young girl in a transparent kimono appeared. 

“Are you just tired or very tired?” asked the 
young girl. 

“ I’m not particularly either, but I must say I’m a 
bit upset because I can’t find the girl I had a letter 
to.” 

“ Who’d you have a letter to? ” 

“A Miss Dickenson, Miss Anna Dickenson.” 

The young girl laughed and pushed her bobbed 
hair out of her eyes. 


20 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


“ Short-waisted Anna ! Bless her old religious 
heart, she used to live here, but she’s gone over with 
a ship-load of Holy Bibles to China.” 

“ Oh, is that so! ” said Evelyn, because she actu- 
ally didn’t know what else to say with her mind rac- 
ing around like a rat in a pantry trying to puzzle out 
this charming-looking, Hat-chested little girl-woman. 

“ I suppose you’re Marj Prouty?” she ventured. 

The other nodded. Then she bowed low and, 
spreading her arms out straight from her sides, said : 
“ I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, come 
within my tent and my servants shall bathe thy weary 
feet and thou shalt receive presents at my hand. In 
other words, you’re alone in a wicked city, so pick 
up your bags and come on inside and make yourself 
comfortable.” 

As Evelyn remembered afterwards, this probably 
was the moment to recall that dreadful report of the 
Chicago Vice Committee, bid this plausible young 
woman good day, and depart. Instead, she per- 
mitted herself and her luggage to be drawn inside 
the gaily painted door, she allowed herself to be 
seated in a spreading willow chair, and presently, 
when the little brass tea-kettle began to boil, eagerly 
accepted a hot cup of lemony tea and asked for two 
lumps. 

“ Now then, Miss What’s-your-name, from I don’t 
know where,” her strange hQstess remarked, “ don’t 
you go worrying.” 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


21 


“I’m not!” Evelyn cried quickly. “And I’m 
Evelyn Irene Kerwin, from Port Illington, Wiscon- 
sin.” 

“ Whatche doin’ so far from home? ” asked Marj, 
flopping down on the floor in front of Evelyn and 
gathering a big bundle of black Persian cat into her 
lap. 

All warmed inside with the tea, Evelyn reached 
into her brown bag and pulled out a huge roll of 
paper. 

“ I’ve come to New York because I’m a writer ! ” 
she said excitedly. “Short stories! You see, I 
became a regular orphan only last week. So here 
I am ! I’ve only got a thousand dollars, but I’ll be 
making loads more before that’s gone. I’m disap- 
pointed, though. Mrs. Pritchard was sure that — 
Oh, you ought to know Mrs. Pritchard ! She’s the 
dearest old colonial thing that ever paddled around 
in hand-knit stockings — well, she was positive Anna 
Dickenson would put me up till I found some place 
to live ! ” 

Marj jumped and clapped her hands with delight. 
The black cat, decidedly offended, spilled out on the 
floor and sulked away. 

“ Woman ! ” Marj screamed, clapping her hands 
again, “ you talk faster and more incoherently than 
even I! You’re a real find!” Then she put on a 
sanctimonious face. “Anna was my friend — long- 
legged, virtuous Anna, who is now heckling the pit- 


22 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


iful Chinese. Well, for her sake, I will put you up 
for the night. And to-morrow ? As Mr. Kipling 
might have said, to-morrow is another day.” 

Marj began pulling out dresser drawers and danc- 
ing about the flat. 

“ Here’s a bath towel and there’s one for your face, 
and behind that door is the tub. Chuck your pack 
in the little room, and if there’s anything else you 
want, scream ! ” 

Evelyn began to thrill with excitement. Marj 
was certainly different from anything she had ever 
seen at Port Illington: or Madison or even Chicago. 
But then, that was just why she had come away — 
to see things and people that were different from 
people and things at Port Illington or Madison or 
even Chicago. This was no ten-cent movie. This 
was real life ! 

In the tub she splashed and gurgled and thanked 
God for His wisdom in calling Anna to the heathen 
Chinese. Anna was probably Port Illington or 
worse, but Marj Prouty — why, Marj was a million 
fiction stories a minute ! 

As a bath in a strange house leaves one a stranger 
no longer, Evelyn emerged flushed and reassured, 
and Marj plucked at the damp curls that clung to her 
guest’s forehead and pouted. 

“ Lovely hair ! Mine is stiff as a picket fence. 
Fall into your clothes now. Party here to-night. 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


23 


Fancy dress ball afterwards. I’ll say you’re my old 
college chum, Eve.” 

“ You’re awfully good to me,” said Eve. “ Why, 
I’m a perfect stranger to you.” 

“ Stale stuff, kid. Great in the golden ’forties, 
but won’t go in New York now. You’re fresh and 
new and I’m bored — that’s the only reason on God’s 
green footstool I’m taking you in. I want a thrill! 
My kingdom for a thrill ! ” 

And then the girl-woman came close up to Eve 
and spoke tight-throatedly : “ There isn’t a day in 
the year that I don’t drag in a weeping Italian or a 
Jew and water him with a cup of Orange Pekoe tea 
and let him talk his hands and feet off! Bored, 
bored ! I do these things because I’m bored ! ” 

“ I thought,” said Eve cautiously, “ maybe you 
were a writer, too, and looking for atmosphere.” 

“Atmosphere ! ” shrieked Marj, twirling about on 
one foot and landing in a lump on the mulberry 
taffeta divan. “Atmosphere! Why, there’s more 
atmosphere in that Charles Dickens family of mine 
that I left back there in Texas than there is on the 
whole island of Manhattan ! ” 

“ I suppose that’s true about everybody’s family,” 
sighed Eve, undoing her hair and shaking it out into 
a large dark fan ; “ but the trouble is that one never 
suspects one’s own family of being interesting, one’s 
time is so occupied trying to escape them.” 

“ Spring is coming, and this is no time for melarp 


24 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


choly retrospect. Hurry, Eve, or they’ll be here be- 
fore you’re dressed.” 

Eve flew to the little room and fumbled about in 
her once orderly bags for a certain white chiffon 
blouse. 

“ Say, you hostess lady!” she called. “May I 
say, Marj ? Guess I’ll have to if we’re to be old 
college chums. Say, Marj, girl, what do you do for 
a living? ” 

“ Oh, I’m an interior decorator person. Funny 
how you can get automobile trade over to the East 
Side if you have something new to offer them. Ever 
heard about Eddie Goodman and the Washington 
Square Players? Bunch of writers and artists mad 
enough at Broadway to start an East Side Theatre 
of their own. You ought to see the Pierce Arrows 
crowding around that entrance. Half the mutts that 
paddle over there don’t understand the plays, but 
it’s new. Hang it all, the world would break the 
whole Ten Commandments if you could show ’em a 
new way to do it.” 

Eve emerged buttoning up her blouse. “You 
know, Marj, I really suspected you the moment I 
saw those blue-grey curtains and that orange taffeta 
frill on your white book-shelf. I’m just plain stupid 
when it comes to decoration. If I try to arrange a 
bath-room, it simply laughs in my face.” 

“All bunk! ” answered Marj, straightening a print 
of old Sogi who had suddenly got tipsy in the breeze. 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


25 


“Absolutely all bunk ! Never studied it in my life. 
Simply had to do something, so< I went to the library 
one afternoon and spent two solid hours learning 
how to decorate. More feeling in me for that than 
for litrature. Notice how I pronounce it. That’s 
how they say it in Greenwich Village. You’ll have 
to know the Village ! ” 

“ I want to know everything,” said Eve, running 
her fingers over the big golden lampshade as though 
she had high hopes of coaxing some of the painted 
peacocks to strut off into her hands. “A big city is 
glorious. I thrilled all over when I came into Penn- 
sylvania station. I’m thrilling now because you 
took me in. I’ll never, never want to go out West 
again.” 

“ Don’t be a fool, Eve Kerwin ! ” and Marj’s voice 
was a little trembly. “ You will want to go back — 
that’s just the sad part of it.” 

Marj stood at the window, her eyes on the oily 
grey river where a big mud-scow was floating out 
toward the ocean. 

“ You will want to go back,” she repeated half to 
herself. “ You’ll cry big wet tears all over the page 
when you write to the girls at home, and then some 
day, when you can’t stand it any longer, you’ll go.” 
Marj turned suddenly with her little fists clenched 
tight. “And then you’ll find you don’t fit in any 
more! ” 


26 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


Suddenly they both found themselves crying some 
of those big wet tears. 

Marj spoke again : “ Oh, it isn’t that I still want 
Texas. It’s too little, too 1 cramped, too set in its 
ideas ; but way off here it’s so big and unstable and 
so horribly all alone. Sometimes I get perfectly 
frantic for something to cling to. . . . Put on 

your belt ! ” 

Eve went into the other room and hunted for her 
belt. Suddenly she noticed a little black clock that 
was ticking its life away on the green-painted chest 
of drawers, 

“ Marj ! ” she called out in fright, “ it’s eight 
o’clock now ! ” 

Marj came to the door. 

“ Eight o’clock? Well, what of it? You don’t 
think folks in New York dine at six, do you? My 
child, this is not Port Illington. Folks here — that 
is, my kind of folks — dine when they’re hungry.” 

“Yes,” faltered Eve, “I know; but you haven’t 
even begun preparing anything ! Can’t I do some- 
thing to help? ” 

“ Yes. You water the cretonne flowers on the 
bedspread ! ” 


CHAPTER III 


Just then the Chinese bells began to jingle and 
Marj raced to the door, her kimono floating wide. 

“ Hello, Marj ! ” 

“ Hello!” 

“ Here’s the eats ! ” 

“ Look what I brang ! ” 

“ Look what he brang! ” 

“ Look what the Pij brang ! ” 

Five men marched in, and Marj kissed them each 
as a Contessa Montessori might kiss her kindergarten 
babies. 

Eve snatched a pearl brooch from her own bosom 
and pinned Marj’s kimono together over her envelope 
chemise. 

“ You poor little provincial,” purred Marj, patting 
Eve’s head, “ you remind me of something I had 
quite forgotten — my own body!” Turning, she 
announced: “Boys, this is Eve, an old friend of 
mine ! ” Then she leaped to the centre of the table, 
waved both hands, and barked : “ This creature was 
caught in the wilds of Wisconsin by the desire to be 
one of us in New York! At present she’s horribly 
tame and unmade, but shows promise of great possi- 
bilities. What am I bid? What am I bid? ” 

27 


28 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


“Three pounds of chicken salad!” howled the 
Pigeon, dropping his donation to the supper at 
Marj’s feet. 

“ Blessed old Pij ! ” said Marj, doubling over and 
kissing his bald spot. “ He always brings something 
expensive! He’s the only man in the bunch with 
money, and therefore the only one who is being done 
to a crisp all the time. But he loves it ! Well, Pij, 
this is Eve Kerwin. Eve, this is the Pij.” 

He bowed low. 

“ Welcome to the garden, Eve, and may you find 
the serpent entertaining.” 

Marj pulled forward the next man. 

“ This is Daffodil. See his lovely yellow curls ? 
Being a boy and knowing he can’t overcome it, we 
excuse him for not being a girl.” 

The Daffodil was a tall blue-eyed youth who wrote 
verse and starved to death. He kissed Eve’s finger- 
tips with affectionate and becoming melancholy. 

“And this is Butts, the tight-wad ! ” 

Butts’ two arms were laden with packages, and 
Eve thought Marj unjust and blushed rosily for 
Butts ; but seeing that the others, including the laden 
Butts himself, were howling at what they seemed to 
consider a family joke, she hastily withdrew her 
sympathy. 

“Don’t you believe them, Eve!” shouted Butts, 
hastily unloading his packages right on the floor 
because he couldn’t talk without his hands. “ Don’t 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


29 


you believe them ! They all say that, but Fm eter- 
nally spending money on them, now ain’t I ? Speak 
the truth, children ! ” 

“ Sure you are, and you’re a dear old thing,” said 
Marj, hopping down like a sparrow and picking up 
bags and packages, “ but you’re a tight- wad anyway, 
darling. Stinginess is a condition of the brain and 
not of the wallet. Wait till you’re psychoed — 
you’ll find out ! ” 

Poor Butts, pretending discomfiture at the accusa- 
tions he had heard a million times, placed his hand 
over his diaphragm and bowed before Eve. “At 
your service, Miss.” 

“ He talks like a taxi-driver,” said the Pij, “ but 
he isn’t. And now, Eve, let us present the Child — 
the sweetest, the youngest, the prettiest lad in the 
Village. We beg of you not to lead him astray.” 

Eve shuddered at hearing such adjectives applied 
to a man. But he was beautiful. He had finely 
modelled, regular features, and his expression was 
gentle and a little sad. For a moment as they stood 
looking at each other Eve was in doubt as to whether 
she should shake his hand or offer him a lollipop. 

Then the Child broke forth into deep, manly 
laughter that contradicted his face, and Eve straight- 
way reached out her hand and shook his vigorously. 

“And this other being,” said the Pij, “ is Spinach 
the health fiend. He is famous for never having 
eaten a square meal in his life. But I will say this 


30 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


for him, he does eat a lettuce leaf every other week 
whether he’s hungry or not.” 

“ I’m certainly very glad to' meet you all.” 

Eve spoke precisely in her very best Port Illing- 
tonese, but her very best Port Illingtonese excited 
only a shout of derision, and all the men except Spin- 
ach turned upon her and, wheeling her about from 
one to another, showered on her a succession of 
kisses — on the forehead, on the nose, on the chin — 
anywhere. And each kiss as it came burned and 
ached and shamed her until she was horribly hurt and 
ready to weep. 

But she didn’t weep. With a great effort of will 
she reminded herself that she was a writer who had 
come to the great city in search of life and local color. 
Hasn’t the artist always to sacrifice something for 
the sake of his art ? So she clenched her teeth and 
kept down the tears. 

Spinach alone saw her unhappiness and tried to 
rescue her. 

“ Say, you loafers ! ” he shouted, “ can’t you use 
a little discrimination? Perhaps Eve doesn’t want 
to be kissed ! ” 

“ Oh, you old potato blight ! ” cried the Pij, plant- 
ing a last kiss smack on Eve’s neck. “ Now she’s a 
member ! ” 

“ Stop scrapping, children,” Marj ordered, “ and 
get to work. We’ve got a million things to do 
before we go to' the ball. Eve, lift up that side of the 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


3 * 


table, and you, Daffodil, sprawl out the legs. Spin- 
ach, like a vegetable love, will you climb up and get 
down the yellow plates from the shelf ? That’s right. 
Now the big Canton bowl for the salad, and the big 
blue plates for the bread and things.” 

The coffee in the copper thing began to percolate, 
and soon the feast was ready. 

“ Whatche gonna wear, Marj ? ” asked Butts, the 
tight-wad, helping himself to large portions, especi- 
ally of everything that he himself had brought. 

“ Oh, I’ve got a thousand yards of white net ! I’ll 
drape that over a silk chemise, and then I’ll wrap 
that tinsel cloth around my head. But Eve ! What 
shall we do Eve in? She’s got to be lovely! ” 

“ Leave her to me,” said the Child. “ But lernme 
eat first. Gimme the sardines.” 

The poetic Daffodil helped himself to a quarter 
pound of butter, and then, snatching Marj’s spoon, 
sang out : “ Why don’t they ever have spoons 

enough ! ” 

“My Gawd, look at the butter Daffy takes!” 
cried Butts, the tight-wad, in tones of deep distress. 
He had bought the butter, and while he didn’t mind 
paying for it, he couldn’t bear to have it eaten. 

“ Bring on the dee-sert ! ” shouted the Child, and 
they all joined in the chorus, knocking their knife 
ends urgently on Marj’s mahogany table; “Dee 5 ’ 

serf, dee-sert, bring on the dessert I ” 


32 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


Marj adored sweets. She actually squirmed when 
Daffy handed her an eclair. 

“Oh, damnable old French pastry!” wailed the 
Child. “ Who brought the French pastry? Who 
brought it, I say? It’s made out of sea sand! ” and 
he stood up menacingly with his fork in his hand. 

Butts popped to his feet. “ I bought it, if you 
want to know; and it came from Cushman’s and 
Cushman’s is expensive! You haven’t even tasted 
it yet, you kicker ! ” 

They finished the pastries, then pushed back their 
chairs and began to clear the table. Butts washed 
the dishes and the Pij dried them, and in ten minutes 
there wasn’t a crumb to show which way the babes in 
the wood had gone. 

“ Got any silk bloomers, Eve ? ” asked the Child, 
and Eve jumped as though he had fired a revolver 
close to her ear. 

“ Why, yes — I have — I ” 

“ Well, haul ’em out and let’s see how we can 
make you up.” 

The Daffodil stood her on her feet and began to 
unhook her blouse. 

“Stop! Stop! Stop!” she cried, pulling away 
from him. 

“ Well then. Miss Prissy Prunes Prisms, do it 
yourself, but hurry up a bit. We haven’t got all 
night. And right here I’d like to say that you aren’t 
on to this gang at all. You never met a cleaner 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


33 


bunch in your life. You don’t dope us out right, 
Mrs. Comstock. This is just family stuff, that’s 
all.” The Daffodil turned to the others. “ Cheer 
her up, boys ! She thinks the next degree is step- 
ping on hot nails ! ” 

“ I’m — I’m not afraid — that is, not very,” Eve 
quavered. “ I understand.” 

Eve really was beginning to understand. The 
boys were all right, but what about Marj? Marj 
certainly was a problem. She didn’t act like a good 
girl, and still she didn’t act like the bad ones in the 
best literature. . . . 

“ Take off your blouse, Eve, and let’s see if we 
can drape this Turkish thing around you and make 
you look like the old Pasha’s favorite ! ” 

The Pi j held up an exquisite shawl, but Eve stared 
at him without moving. 

“ Take it off,” he coaxed, and then he added im- 
patiently: “ For Gawd’s sake, take it off — o double 
f, off ! These men have seen more necks and shoul- 
ders than Ziegfeld ! ” 

“ Well, I’d rather take it off in my own room ! ” 
Eve murmured, feeling suddenly very hot and shriv- 
elled. 

“ She’s a long, long way from Tipperary, boys,” 
hummed the Child. 

“Aw, let ’er alone,” Butts said. “ Give her time 
and she’ll get there.” 

Eve &new they would think her prudish. Never- 


34 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


theless she did go into the other room and unhook 
her blouse alone. Then she wound the Turkish 
scarf about her shoulders. 

“ Look, folks ! ” Butts cried as she reappeared. 
“Ain’t she wonderful! Gimme that lip-stick! I 
want her face pale and her eyelashes black and her 
lips like fire. Marj, gimme that green velvet for a 
band around her forehead. Where’s that gold tassel 
I left here last time? Gimme! Hurry! Now, 
ain’t she pretty ! ” 

Eve was thrilled. The people at Port Illington 
certainly were dead ones. It was only these people 
here who knew how to find happiness. This was 
life. It must be life. It was life. 

“ Drop your skirt now and put the bloomers on. 
Oh, of course, in the other room, Miss Purity 
League ! ” And they all rushed her through the 
door and pretended to lock it against themselves. 

Eve viewed herself in the mirror. She really was 
beautiful. She came out in a moment with eyes that 
seemed to be looking out over great broad, sparkling 
worlds. New worlds they were where she had not 
yet left her visiting card. 

Nobody breathed for a full second, and then Butts, 
the connoisseur, broke into rhapsodies : “Ain’t she 
got pretty legs? She’s just plump enough. She’s 
sweet as pun-kins ! ” He turned his head this way 
and that. “ Tie the other scarf around her hips and 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


35 

bring it down into a knot in front. Sure, let the two 
ends flow. Gee, she’s great ! ” 

Then the men began to rig themselves up. Butts 
became a red-robed Turk, with a great yellow turban 
about his head. The effect of him standing before 
the mirror with Eve was startling. 

The Child rolled up his underclothes, wound a 
leopard’s skin around his trunk, dismissed his socks 
for the evening, and slipped his bare feet into sandals. 
Finally, he ran a comb up through his Byronic hair 
and stood there a young god. 

The Daffodil was a cassocked monk, and the Pij 
was Pierrot. Pij was unfailingly Pierrot. Spinach 
at the last moment pulled a black domino out of his 
pocket and stumbled into it. 

At midnight all of them, in a joyous state of ex- 
citement, crowded into one taxi and rolled away to 
the artists’ ball. 

Music and laughter met them at the entrance of 
the hall, and Eve, with the Daffodil tugging at her 
left hand and the Child at her right, rushed valiantly 
into that sparkling new world to leave her visiting 
card. 


CHAPTER IV 


At one end of the ball-room a black and white 
pantomime was spending itself on a toy stage. At 
the other end the drunken music-makers were pound- 
ing out a syncopated frenzy. The balcony all around 
was hung with limp arms and painted faces that 
gazed on the floor below, where all the madness of 
all the witchcraft of all the ages was rocking itself 
in a delirium of dance. 

Eve saw nothing but the color; felt nothing but 
the motion. In the arms of Daffodil she floated 
round and round the great hall intoxicated with a 
dream of all the Arabian Nights rolled into one. 

When the music stopped she looked so new, so 
fresh, so eager, that a band of comic opera outlaws 
bent on adventure swooped down and wrenched her 
from her cassocked monk. 

She ducked and swerved and fought. Her temper 
rose until she saw the whole universe as one horrid 
painted lip. 

Marj, with her eyes already veiled in alcoholic 
distances, galloped up. “Oh, go on and kiss them. 
Eve ! Don’t be a silly ! ” 

Eve struggled and clawed. 

36 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


37 


“ My God, she’s serious ! ” shouted one of the men, 
letting go Eve’s arm and pulling off his companions. 

She flew to the balcony upstairs. She was hot and 
cold and shivery. She felt hurt and ashamed, and 
she wanted to go home. Those men weren’t play- 
ing fair ! They were — well, they were just not 
nice! 

To Eve a kiss was such a sort of sweet, sacred 
thing. She would have liked saving all hers for — 
well, for somebody she might some day love. 

She shouldn’t have permitted those boys up in 
Marj’s apartment to kiss her that way either, even if 
they were only playing. Kissing was not the way 
to play. She felt instinctively for her skirt. It was 
gone. Then, with a shock, she remembered she 
hadn’t worn one. Her silk-stockinged legs made 
her ashamed. After all, she hadn’t come to New 
York to make a fool of herself ! She had come to 
New York to make a great person of herself ! 

And then, as though an alarm clock had gone off 
in her brain, she rubbed her ees and examined the 
crowd around her and below her. 

Where was all the beauty that she had seen when 
she entered the place? Now, there wasn’t any 
beauty anywhere! The costumes were soiled and 
the people were ugly and sweaty, and the music — 
oh, the music was still beautiful if you didn’t look at 
die drunken musicians. 

She wanted to escape somewhere — anywhere, so 


3 « 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


long as it was away from this human menagerie got 
loose from, the keepers of common sense. 

A rattle of laughter came up from the people 
directly below her. She looked down, and there 
was Marj kissing a man and kicking a chair bottom 
through to punctuate her pleasure. 

The little circle applauded, so she stepped from 
chair to chair, kicking all the bottoms through, then 
sprang at last to the Pij’s shoulder and shrieked for 
another drink. 

He bore her across the ball-room and up the stairs 
to the little box where Eve was sitting alone. Spin- 
ach followed with two lemonades. 

“ Marj,” he said, shaking his finger at her, “ I 
want to talk to you seriously. You’ve had enough 
to drink!” That was Spinach’s way of starting a 
lecture. 

“ Oh, come out of that forty years’ grouch and 
take a real drink yourself ! It won’t do you noth- 
ing,” chirped Marj in high staccato. 

“ I don’t want what you call a real drink and you 
know it, and if you don’t stop taking real drinks 
you’ll die in the T. B. ward of a public hospital ! ” 

There was a momentary quiver in Marj’s little 
body. 

“ Marj, dear,” Eve whispered, “ please don’t drink 
any more. You will kill yourself.” 

Marj gave Eve a clumsy push. “ You’re nice, 
Eve, but you’re a hymnal. I hate hymns. I hate 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


39 


churches. I hate preachers. I hate everything I 
had when I was young. Waiter, break the speed 
limit and gimme a Haig and Haig! ” 

She turned back to Eve with a silly laugh. “ You 
poor simp, you’re having an aitch of a time here 
to-night because you won’t drink. You’ve got to 
drink at a place like this to keep from going crazy. 
You look like a fool drinking a lemonade at i a.m. in 
a fancy costume! For God’s sake and your own 
sake, Spinach, take her to early Mass and good 
riddance ! ” 

“ Marj, dear, you don’t know what you’re saying. 
Please don’t take anything more to drink.” 

Marj swallowed her whisky in one gulp, jumped 
to the table again, then to the railing that ran around 
the box and, fluttering and piping like a silly sparrow, 
flew off down the steps into the wriggling, writhing, 
half-mad, half-clad lunatics on the floor below. 

“ She’ll commit suicide some day,” muttered 
Spinach. 

Eve didn’t hear him. Her eyes were following 
Marj as she skimmed over the black boards of the 
ball-room floor. 

Marj’s toes were always in the air. Like a dainty 
sparrow her slim little child’s body fluttered and 
lifted and flew from the arms of one red-faced man 
to another. 

Suddenly the music stopped, and a man on the toy 
stage shouted : 


4 o 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


“ Clear the floor for exhibitions ! Prizes will be 
awarded from this platform ! ” 

The dancers fell away to the sides and sank down 
on the floor. Tired heads fell on sweating shoulders 
and aching lips kissed aching lips — it didn’t much 
matter whose. The sun and the world were up for 
the day, but in the curtained ball-room belief in the 
night still lingered. 

Muffled at first, the music soon rose to a rhythmic 
scream. Then from a small opening in the human 
tangle on the floor burst Marj in the arms of a tall 
white shepherd. Eve hadn’t noticed him before. 
He was a handsome youth, slender and lithe and 
dark, as though all the suns of all the tropics had 
burned their moods into his cheeks. 

Marj looked into the Shepherd’s eyes. The Shep- 
herd looked into Marj’s. They tilted a moment, and 
then, like two eerie things of white and silver cloud, 
they swayed into the pulsing rhythm of the music. 

They dipped; they floated; they rocked; they 
poised. Their bodies clung and tore apart and 
melted together again. Then, as a ship hoists her 
signal, the Shepherd twirled Marj about and, catch- 
ing her under the arms, raised her fluttering before 
him and sailed away into the outer darkness. 

For one second there was breathless silence. Then 
shouts! Then screams! Then a mad thunder for 
more ! The people applauded and banged their heels 
on the hard floors. Women cried and laughed and 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


4i 


screeched. Suddenly a whisper ran through the 
hall : the girl had fainted. The news scarcely made 
a ripple. The little channel through which the two 
had disappeared closed again, and from the opposite 
side of the circle tripped Pierrot and Pierrette. In- 
stantly Marj and the Shepherd were forgotten. 

Eve darted down the stairs and battled her way 
through the mob to where Marj lay on the floor, 
crumpled in a heap. 

She and the Shepherd lifted her in their arms and 
carried her out to a taxi. 

It was cold winter daylight and Marj looked as 
ghastly as death. 

Poor little beaten Marj ! She crushed herself up 
close to the Shepherd and shut her eyes, as though 
there were but one safe place in all the world and 
that one just where she lay. 

When they reached the tenements he carried her 
up to bed and went away. Eve undressed her and 
lowered the black shades to crowd out the day. 

As she stood there looking down on that exhausted 
little body she wondered why people did such things 
to themselves. Here was the great and glorious 
world just waiting to be conquered, but not by the 
Marj’s of life. They, poor dears, were too busy 
wasting themselves. 

Eve sat in a big rocker and played solitaire with 
her own plans. It came out right every time. What 
could be simpler? Anybody could do anything he 


42 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


really wanted to do. Wasn’t it Ibsen who said that 
genius was situated in the seat of the trousers ? Just 
a little will to work — that was all. Everything 
else, out of sheer awkwardness, fell directly into line. 

She rocked quietly. All the world was just a 
great big old docile doggie waiting to lick one’s hand. 
It looked black and ferocious, but anybody could 
master it. All its barking meant nothing. Barking 
was probably its Way of showing affection. 

Accidents? Well, of course, there might be acci- 
dents. People did get smashed up in train wrecks 
and fall headlong out of aeroplanes, but, after all, a 
clever person could usually avoid even accidents. 

Home-made wrecks like Marj had only themselves 
to thank. Poor little Marj, with a lot of riotous 
ancestors crowding down on her like a log- jam! 
Why did she permit it ? A good lumberman would 
have extricated some one log that was making all the 
trouble. It was so very simple : Marj should merely 
have refused to drink, and then the whole flow of her 
life would automatically have been released in re- 
sponse to her own will. 

Eve moved up closer to the radiator. It was 
dreadfully cold. . . . 

She wished now that she had talked with Spinach 
about all these things. But Spinach was gone and 
the Shepherd was gone, and she was alone and sleepy 
— alone except for Marj, who still looked as though 
she were dead. 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


43 


Eve got up and heated another iron for Marj’s 
stone-cold feet and made a fresh ice-pack for her 
burning forehead. 


CHAPTER V 

All provincials taboo the word Bohemianism. To 
them it pictures the evil of late hours, alcohol, free- 
dom ! 

But in New York, as in every large city, there are 
two sorts of Bohemianism. the Bohemianism of 
Forty-Second Street with its burnished cafes, its 
shifty-eyed actors and actresses, its dope-fiends, its 
millionaires, its well-dressed parasites ; and the 
Bohemianism of Greenwich Village, with its bare 
boards, its paper napkins, its empty pockets, its hal- 
lowed dreams for remaking the world. 

It was into a haunt of this serious-minded Bohemia 
that Spinach, the health fiend, piloted Eve on the 
night after the ball. 

The little restaurant was in the basement of an old 
brownstone house in Tenth Street. In front of it, 
bouquets of Italian children were swaying to the 
latest tune of a hurdy-gurdy. The aching cold of 
January had relented, and the ragged sprites were 
dancing their prophecy of another Spring. 

The dingy windows of the great house looked for- 
bidding, and Eve lingered near the children. 

44 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


45 


Spinach grew impatient. “ Please come on. We’ll 
miss everybody that’s worth while. You’ll see this 
performance ten million times when the hot weather 
comes ! ” 

“ I don’t care how often I see it again ! ” cried Eve. 
“It won’t be this time! I’ve got one idea about 
life — hug a joy as long as possible! ” Then she 
sighed as though the very mention of joy’s name had 
frightened it away, and followed Spinach down the 
steps through an unlighted passage to a big sandy- 
looking room at the back. 

“You see,” she continued saucily as Spinach pulled 
her out a chair from the long, shabby table, “ I’m an 
egotist with a certain philosophy of life, and nothing 
on earth can alter it. First I am a unit ; that unit 
is really the only thing that counts. I am out for 
experience; that experience is to be used in my 
future, and my future is mapped out as secure and 
unchangeable as the rock of Gibraltar.” 

“ That’s all very well,” he protested, “ but some 
pretty smart folks get bogged for a while. Now 
take me : I’m collecting material for a world drama, 
but I haven’t written it yet. Such things take 
time.” 

“ Nonsense ! I’m afraid you aren’t capable of 
work. Get up early in the morning and do some- 
thing, if it’s only a letter to the Times. Do some- 
thing — that’s my idea. Of course, you’ll call that 
brick-laying, but I’d rather lay bricks than dream 


46 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


along until I wake up some day and find I can’t even 
dream any more.” 

Poor Spinach blinked and gasped. As Eve found 
out later, he was one of those near-geniuses who 
never get anything quite finished. He had note- 
books and notebooks and notebooks that he labored 
over conscientiously. His pockets were stuffed with 
more notes — stray bits written on tickets, railway 
guides, backs of envelopes. What became of all his 
notes? He emptied them, periodically into a huge 
trunk, and there they stayed. 

“As I said, Eve — I’ll call you Eve if you don’t 
mind, as I’m a Socialist and everybody’s my sister — 
as I said, the future’s all right, but why bother about 
it? Now’s the present, and lots of famous people 
come here to eat, and I want you to know them. I 
love famous people, don’t you? ” 

“ I can’t say that I care anything about them,” 
said Eve. “ What I want is to meet real people with 
their common-sense heels flat on the clay.” 

And having delivered herself of this sentiment, 
which was admirable but not quite true, she leaned 
over his shoulder and examined the menu in his 
hands. 

It was a battered war-veteran of a card, blotched 
with soup and city dust, and Eve was glad she didn’t 
have to touch it. 

For that matter the whole place looked germy. 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


47 

She risked a peep at the floor and then drew her 
skirts tight about her and sat on them. 

“ Now, what will you have, Miss Kerwin — I 
mean Miss Eve? What will you have, Eve? You 
see I’m a Socialist, and everybody’s my sister — and 
anyway, I like to call folks by their first names. 
More individuality.” 

Then just as Eve was about to decide on some- 
thing, Spinach left her alone and dashed off to the 
kitchen, where he could be heard shouting economic 
determinism to the cook. 

A tall, thin person with a sarcastic twist on the 
right side of his face blustered into the room and took 
the seat directly opposite Eve. He shoved his hat 
under a chair and smoothed his thick blond hair back 
from his forehead. 

As Eve studied him closely she realized that he 
looked little-boy brave, which is really not brave at 
all. She could almost see him clenching his fist and 
fighting with the tears rolling down his face. 

He had a thumbed looked like some rare old 
edition, and she felt a sudden mother pain as her eyes 
travelled from his saddened face to his threadbare tie 
and from his threadbare tie to* his ill-fitting coat and 
frayed grey flannel cuffs. 

He sat low on his spine, like someone’s “ Portrait 
of an Idealist,” and Eve could almost see the angels 
of vision walking up the stairs of his mind and dis- 
appearing into the roofless heavens. 


48 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


She felt like gathering him all up into her arms 
and crushing his face against her breast, and then, 
perhaps, kissing his eyes until they smiled. It was 
his eyes that smote her hardest. They had the puz- 
zled, frightened look of an animal that was fighting 
for life in some strange wilderness — fighting brave- 
ly, but not quite holding his own. 

Suddenly, Eve felt her own eyes filling with tears, 
and her hands beginning to tremble. 

Just at that moment a beautiful girl — a very God- 
dess of Liberty at a menial job, came out of the 
kitchen, holding aloft, not a torch to light the souls 
of men, but a food-laden tray to fortify their 
stomachs. 

The blond man opposite Eve straightened up. 
“ Bring me some lamb chops, will you, June? ” 

“Anything to drink, Mr. Bird? ” 

Eve noticed that the June person asked the ques- 
tion almost caressingly. 

“ Thank you, no. Just some water,” he answered. 

June disappeared into the kitchen just as Spinach 
emerged bearing a huge assortment of food on a 
bright tin tray. 

Putting it down gingerly he began to pluck off 
chops and potatoes, milk, bread, nuts, dates and figs, 
cheese, and a huge salad. 

Then he looked across and discovered the blond 
man. 

“ How do you do, Mr. Bird? Want you to know 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


49 


Miss Kerwin, from Port Illington, Wisconsin. She’s 
writing books and things ; and, Miss Kerwin, I want 
* you especially to know Stanley Bird. He does the 
most marvellous cartoons of anybody I know.” 

Mr. Bird’s thin body was convulsed for a moment 
with a sort of sarcastic inner burbling as he nodded 
his head to Eve. His lips parted in what seemed to 
be a laugh, but no sound came out. 

Eve began to think that perhaps if he would laugh 
a real laugh instead of just showing his beautiful 
teeth, he might lose some of that beaten look. 

Spinach babbled on : “ You see, I believe in Mr. 
Bird. He’s a Socialist, too, and therefore a brother 
of mine. And he’s a thinker and a genius as well. 
He’s lost faith in himself, or he doesn’t care much, 
or something, but ” 

June interrupted with chops for Mr. Bird, and 
supper for herself, and spreading it all out on the 
table, sat down beside him. 

There was something valiant about the way she 
buttered a piece of rye bread and slipped it over to 
Mr. Bird’s plate. There was something melting 
about the way she gulped as she watched him settle 
down hungrily to a meal not big enough for the io 
a.m. nibble of a Riverside Drive infant. 

“ Say, Bird, help a fellow out to-night ! ” And 
she pushed towards him a large glass of milk. 

“ Sorry. Can’t do anything for you, June. Not 
hungry enough.” He pushed the glass back to her, 


50 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


“ Oh, gowan. You know I get my meals for 
nothing, and Eve drunk out of this already, so I 
can’t put it back. I know! Bet you’re afraid of 
my germs ! ” June laughed hopefully. 

“’Deed I’m not, June!” And the thin man’s 
long, blue- veined hand closed round the glass. 

Eve felt relieved. At least a part of that enor- 
mous void would be filled. She tried to think of 
something casual to say, but she couldn’t. 

He spoke : “ So you write, Miss Kerwin. What 
do you write ? I don’t seem to remember the name.” 

Eve’s words came in little spurts. “Oh — I 
write — heaps — short stories principally — I ” 

The Goddess of Liberty looked as though she’d 
like to choke this new woman, and she showed it by 
slamming the dishes together with a loud rattle and 
swooping off to the kitchen with them,. 

“And what sort of stories do you write, Miss 
Kerwin ? ” There came again that sarcastic twitch 
to the right-hand corner of his mouth. 

“ Oh, Mr. Bird, if you don’t mind, let’s talk about 
your cartoons ! ” 

“ My cartoons ! ” His body rocked with silent 
laughter. 

Spinach came to the rescue. “ Now what do you 
want for dessert, Miss Kerwin — Eve? Here’s the 
card. Cornstarch pudding? No, that will make 
you too fat. Gelatine with whipped cream? All 
right, I’ll chase back and get it.” 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


5i 


“ Where are you staying, Miss Kerwin? ” Stanley 
Bird looked searchingly at her. “ Fd like to see you 
again. It warms my hands to be around with suc- 
cessful people.” 

All her life Eve had had a theory that if one 
claimed to be successful for a sufficient length of 
time, then one would just naturally become success- 
ful. Bluff should be the rule until one got some- 
where, and after that modesty was an exquisite 
thing. But in the face of this man she felt suddenly 
small and mean. She was confused, and she wished 
with all her heart that he would not look at her so 
searchingly. It was as though her whole soul stood 
there naked and ashamed before his honesty. 

Finally she found her tongue. “ Fm staying at 
Marj Prouty’s, and Fd like very much to have you 
come to see me. Do you know her? ” 

“ Indeed, yes. I’ll drop around to-morrow night 
if you’ll let me.” He sank low in his chair and 
tilted himself uneasily on the two back legs. 

“ I wish you would, Mr. Bird. You know where 
Marj lives, of course? ” Eve felt a giddy little joy 
racing all around her brain. She’d get the chance 
later to explain a lot of things to him and to encour- 
age him 1 . Already she had an enormous desire to 
encourage him. 

She was so fearful he mightn’t find the place that 
she was going to write the number down on a little 
slip of paper. As she took a pencil out of her red 


52 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


leather pocket-book, a brown-haired, sunny man 
came in and slapped Mr. Bird on the back. He 
jumped as though he had been torpedoed, and turned 
angrily. Then he caught himself and laughed. 

“ Oh, hello, Fischer. Want you to know Miss 
Kerwin. Miss Kerwin, this is my friend, Anton 
Otto Fischer. You know : paints big wolf -men in 
ice-bound vessels. Real guts in his stuff.” 

And the brown, sunny man shook her hand vigor- 
ously and sat down beside her. 

“ Is Kerr coming to-night? ” asked Bird, pushing 
the messy menu toward Fischer. “ Want to see him 
about that illustration he promised to do for the Call” 

“ Sure, there he is with England. Sit over here, 
fellows!” and he beckoned the two to the table. 
Then he continued : “Tell Piet to come on and eat 
now.” 

Piet turned out to be a Belgian who ran the res- 
taurant and a co-operative store and a magazine on 
the side. 

“ Piet ! Piet ! ” called Fischer, and the big ex- 
European with a seaman’s lurch came in from the 
kitchen, splashing and spilling his soup impression- 
istically down his shirt front. 

“ Hello, comrades, how you feel ? Good, huh ? 
Cold as the devil to-night — huh ? No? I thought 
it was cold.” Piet, the inimitable, made one last 
splash as he settled his plate on the table. 

His shoulders were stooped in a way that gave him 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


53 


a forward rushing look. His eyes were sharp and 
twinkly, like a ferret’s. They squinted on both sides 
of a lock of hair that hooked like a lobster claw over 
the tip of his nose. 

“ Well, Piet, how’s business? ” 

Fischer pushed the French bread toward him, and 
he tore off half a yard. 

“Damn business!” said Piet. “Let’s eat!” 
And he waded valiantly into his soup. 

The Goddess of Liberty stalked sullenly in and 
out of the kitchen serving the new-comers. 

“ June’s got a real job for the summer,” said Piet. 
“ What do you know about it ? Three cheers for 
June and the stage ! ” They all lifted their glasses 
and drank Piet’s toast. 

June went sulking back into the kitchen. She had 
been out of a job for a year, and it hadn’t improved 
her opinion of the theatrical system. 

“ Well! ” said Bird, on June’s next trip from the 
regions of frying steak, “ don’t you care, old girl ! 
There’ll come a time when we’ll have our little So- 
cialist theatres all over the world. Then you won’t 
have to accept the manager’s attentions along with 
your salary.” 

June’s temper was still in the ascendant, and she 
banged the food down on the table. But nobody 
cared about that. What they did care about was 
that she was straight and clean, and not for sale. 

Bird stood up and stretched himself. As he 


54 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


stretched, his grey flannel shirt crawled up higher 
and higher. His belt was so loose that his trousers 
hung in folds at his ankles and dusted the floor at his 
heels. He was utterly careless in his personal ap- 
pearance — something Eve had always supposed she 
disliked in a man. But she didn’t dislike him. . . . 
She thought that she had never seen anything so tall 
as he looked when he stretched, and at the same time 
so sad and little-boyish. She wanted to say some- 
thing to him, but she dared not. Oh, if she could 
only think of some way of detaining him! Her 
hands were pressed tightly together under the table. 
She didn’t know what else she might want of him 
in the future, but just now she wanted him not to 
leave her. 

She half rose from her chair in her anxiety to 
interest him, but he turned and left without seeing 
her, without even bidding her good-bye. 


CHAPTER VI 


Early next morning Eve bathed and breakfasted. 
She dressed herself carefully and took great pains 
with her hair. After she had it arranged smooth 
and tight, she pulled out wavy strands here and there 
to give the effect of carelessness. She laid her 
blouses out in military rows on the bed, and tried 
them on one after another. She chose a lacy one at 
last, one that sat well on young breasts and rosy 
shoulders. 

To babble where the strictest secrecy should be 
observed, she studied her appearance full view, side 
view, and back view, with a hand-mirror held at 
various angles. 

With the conquering little turban of purple and 
gold on her head, and her furs hooked up carefully 
about her throat, she started out. 

How fast the feet fly to reach a coveted place! 
How sturdy the legs are when the mind is full of 
hope ! 

Her success was just around the corner. She 
knew it. It was almost too easy. A sense of 
obstacles might even have lent an extra dash of 
pleasure to the adventure. 

55 


56 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


This sounds like an errand of love. It was. Love 
of success — the best love, the greatest love, the love 
that lasts after all the little loves are buried and for- 
gotten. 

Inside her muff Eve’s hands clutched tightly the 
fat bundle of manuscripts. 

At ten minutes past ten she entered the Street & 
Smith offices on Fifteenth Street and Seventh Ave- 
nue. She was perfectly willing not to start with the 
Century and Harper's and McClure's. She would 
show them first what she could do. Every editor 
was always on the lookout for a new writer. They’d 
discover her soon enough. 

The waiting-room was clean and highly polished, 
like a coffin lid. It is disquieting to be in a room 
like a coffin lid when you don’t know what to do next. 

Eve sat at the centre table and turned the pages of 
various Street & Smith magazines. At half-past 
ten the elevator rolled up and disgorged a prosperous- 
looking gentleman. He rushed across the room and 
said something to the girl who sat at a sort of cash- 
ier’s window. At once the girl opened a glass door 
and admitted him. 

Eve didn’t know what he was admitted to, but she 
did know that he disappeared, and that he seemed on 
excessively friendly terms with the girl who had 
helped him to disappear. 

Gathering up her manuscripts, she walked briskly 
over tq the girl at the window. 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


57 


“ H’m,” murmured Eve. 

“ Well? ” snapped the girl without lifting her eyes 
from the latest issue of Ainslee’s. 

“ I’ve some stories,” she began, “ that I’d like to 
leave here. They ” 

The girl chopped short Eve’s explanation. 

“ For which magazine ? ” 

“ Why, I’ll sell them to any of the Street & Smith 
magazines that want them.” 

The girl sniffed scornfully. 

“ We don’t accept stuff that way. Address each 
story to the magazine you intend it for.” She 
pushed some large envelopes toward Eve with airy 
contempt in every gesture. 

Eve was horribly humiliated, but she “ considered 
the source,” as her mother used to tell her to do, and 
with the envelopes in her hand walked quietly back 
to the big coffin-like table in the middle of the room 
and sat down. 

Again she looked through all the latest numbers 
of the Street & Smith magazines, then sat back be- 
wildered. Why all this ceremony about addressing 
one’s stories to a certain magazine ? The stories, in 
all of them, were exactly alike. They all began the 
same way, and they all ended the same way. She 
wanted to run. If there had been any way of elud- 
ing the eyes of that blondined creature at the win- 
dow, Eve would have risked sliding down the cables 
in the elevator shaft, 


5 « 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


Without puzzling her head any longer, she stuffed 
four stories into each envelope, addressed them hap- 
hazardly and took them to the window. 

“ Got return-stamped envelopes ? ” asked the 
golden goddess. 

“ No,” quavered Eve, “ you didn’t give me enough, 
but I’ll go out and buy some and come back in a few 
minutes.” 

At the corner drug-store she found a post office 
sub-station where she bought stamps and envelopes. 

“A writer, too, Miss ? ” asked the old druggist, 
with a forlorn note in his voice. “ Lots of ’em in 
this neighborhood.” 

Somehow, Eve got the idea that he, too, had been 
insulted by a blondined office girl, and it was all she 
could do to keep from throwing her arms about his 
neck and weeping on his grey mohair coat. But the 
old bravado came back and she talked gaily as she 
moistened the stamps. 

“ Yes, I write a bit! ” And with the words she 
grew a whole new crop of egotism. 

“ Used to write myself one time. Sold a lot to 
the Munsey folks, but somebody with a newer twist 
stepped in and they got tired of my stuff, and I 
couldn’t write any other kind, so I quit.” 

He had actually sold something! She took his 
hand and shook it vigorously. 

“ Well, don’t let them down you. You just keep 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


59 

on writing. You can make 'em all sit up and take 
notice if you want to hard enough ! ” 

He smiled a sweet old smile and shook his head. 
“ Child, I wouldn't write again for worlds. Haven’t 
done a line since the old Argosy days.” 

She had no idea what “ the old Argosy days ” 
were. At home they had taken the Century and the 
Survey . She looked sympathetic, however, and 
murmured “ I see.” 

He walked to the door with her and wished her 
good luck. 

Fifteen minutes later she was drinking soda at 
Greenhut’s fountain. “ It doesn’t really matter,” 
she thought, “ nothing really matters.” At the 
same time she dug her long spoon energetically into 
the bottom of the glass for the last bit of cream and 
the last crushed strawberry. “ These bitter experi- 
ences are material. Good material. All great peo- 
ple go through just such things.” 

Almost blithely she bought a Red Book and hur- 
ried up to the public library on Fifth Avenue to study 
its contents. After all, one can't be aloof from the 
market. 

Anybody who had taken the trouble to watch her 
might have seen a sarcastic curl in her upper lip. At 
four o’clock she clapped the covers together. “ Rot- 
ten stuff! The worst story I’ve written is better 
than the best of these ! It’s pull, that’s exactly what 
it is — pull ! People that get in have got pull ! ” 


6o 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


Out in the street she felt cold and forlorn. She 
couldn’t gather courage enough to cross Fifth Ave- 
nue. Fifteen minutes she waited, her teeth chatter- 
ing and her lips blue. Then a policeman walked 
over and took her arm. He piloted her across safely, 
and she was almost sorry he did. It might have 
been better if one of those ichthyosaurian ’buses had 
squashed her to death. 

“ Poor old druggist,” she muttered to herself. “I 
bet he wrote good stuff and nobody wanted it.” 

Her legs began to weigh forty tons apiece and 
her hips ached as though she had done a week’s wash- 
ing. She could scarcely crawl along. She had 
never before believed that there was failure in the 
world for people who really wanted success. 

“ Poor old druggist. I bet he wrote good stuff 
and nobody wanted it.” 

She couldn’t get him out of her mind. Suddenly 
she became the old man, doing a menial job in her 
dotage. She hunted for the job and became a cook. 
She sobbed as she washed the prunes and told each 
new mistress that she had been a wonderful writer, 
but the world had denied her the chance. Then she 
refused to be a cook any longer, and took carbolic 
acid. But carbolic is a frightful death, so she 
changed it to bichloride. One lingers horribly with 
bichloride. Perhaps it would be better to gain the 
sympathy of some chemist, get a phial of cyanide 
from him, go into the woods and build a huge funeral 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


61 


pyre, light it, swallow the cyanide, and step into the 
flames. 

By this time she had reached a grocery store on 
Avenue A. She went in to buy some crackers and 
cheese and things. But nobody would wait on her. 
People came in, bought what they wanted, went 
away, and still she sat there drooping on a sugar 
barrel without strength enough to demand attention. 

She looked straight into the grocer's eyes, and his 
gaze went through her to the boxes of rice and bak- 
ing powder and cornstarch on the shelf behind. Per- 
haps she was so ineffectual that she was no longer 
visible to the naked eye. Very well, she would soon 
find out. 

She stood up suddenly and pushed the people out 
of her way. 

“ I want a pound of butter! ” she shouted, “ and 
a dozen eggs and a box of brown rice ! ” 

The line of waiting people fell back, and the grocer 
said : “ Yes, Ma’m,” and jumped about like a mon- 
key on a stick. 

“Anything else, Ma’m? ” he asked nervously, lay- 
ing her purchases in a neat pile. 

“Yes!” she snapped. “Five cents’ worth of 
yellow cheese, a box of Saltines, and a loaf of 
Straight Edge bread. And be quick about it ! ” 

“ Yes, Ma’m,” he said, and he was quick. 

“ That’s all ! ” Eve pounded the money down on 
the counter and snatched up her package. 


62 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


She heard the people gasp as she upset a stack of 
soap on her rush to the door. She banged the door 
behind her. 

“ That’s the stunt ! ” she growled. “ Step all over 
’em! Weariness is a mental attitude and you 
mustn’t let it get you! Imitate the fiend at the 
Street & Smith offices. That’s the kind of warfare 
there is in this world, and you can’t beat it with sen- 
timentality ! Don’t be like the poor old failure of a 
druggist ! That’s no way to succeed ! The Street & 
Smith girl had it right. Be a devil! Be a devil! 
Be a devil ! ” 


CHAPTER VII 


Eve’s vicious mood lasted till she reached the tene- 
ments. Then the effort of climbing five flights of 
stairs again “ took all the starch out of her,” as her 
mother used to say. Arrived at the top landing, she 
stood dejectedly confronting Marj’s fire-proof door. 

Now, windows are inviting. They have expres- 
sion and character. But doors are different — espe- 
cially fire-proof tenement doors. They shriek 
“ Begone ! ” Marj had realized this at once. That 
was why she had put out the little Chinese lacquer 
chair and painted the free-for-all invitation. To- 
gether they took off the curse. 

Yes, doors are forbidding, but yet they can be 
trusted. They’re like severe fathers who pretend to 
be dragons when all the time they have chocolate 
drops in their overcoat pockets. 

Eve wasn’t to be fooled by that hideous brown 
sheet of iron. She had seen the fairyland behind. 

“ Marj ! ” she called, flinging open the door. But 
Marj was gone, and the fairyland was cold and 
dismal. 

Slinging her coat angrily at the couch, Eve banged 
down all the windows. Then, without even remov- 
63 


64 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


in g her hat, she went into the kitchen, scrambled 
three eggs, and stood at the stove eating them with 
a spoon. They needed salt. She looked up dramat- 
ically at the salt box, but did not reach for it. Who 
was she that she should have salt on her eggs ? 

On the way back to the living-room she munched 
a piece of stale bread. She hated stale bread, and 
there was a fresh loaf in the bread box. No matter. 

She flung herself on the couch, throwing her little 
conquering turban of purple and gold on the floor. 
The black cat came up and rubbed its body against 
her arm and sniffed into her ear. 

“ Mutsie,” she moaned, “ this world’s an awful 
place. You don’t know it because you have Ham- 
burger steak and raw eggs every day. You ought 
to be an alley cat for a week. You’d just naturally 
starve to death. That’s exactly what you would — 
you’d turn your toes up from the asphalt.” 

It might all be perfectly true, but Mutsie wasn’t 
going to worry her head about it. She crawled up 
under Eve’s arm 1 and, purring like a high-powered 
engine, settled herself for a warm nap. 

But Eve was a talkative bed-fellow. “ Think of 
that poor old druggist being crowded out after he 
had really arrived, Mutsie. Isn’t it just too pathetic ? 
Perhaps it would be better not to have so much am- 
bition. Perhaps it would be better not to> have any 
ambition at all. The people that seem to have the 
best time are the ones that follow the cow-path. But 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 65 

one can't just say ‘ follow the cow-path/ and follow. 
There are all sorts of inside forces that push.” 

“ Ugh, it’s cold in here ! ” she said, reaching down 
for Marj’s lovely old camers-hair shawl. In the 
warm comfort of the shawl she and Mutsie soon 
went to sleep. 

The boats slid by on the river, and the dark came 
down against the windows. 

Suddenly over the blackness tinkled the Chinese 
bells, and Eve awoke not certain whether she was in 
Hong Kong or Port Illington, or whether it was 
dewy morn or starry night. She stumbled dazedly 
to the door. 

Nobody was there. The bells tinkled again. No 
doubt the postman ringing from downstairs. She 
propped the door open with a miniature totem pole 
that dangled by a golden cord from the knob, and 
walked out to the open stairway. 

“ Hello, up there ! ” someone shouted from below. 

Eve recognized the voice of Stanley Bird, and her 
hands flew up to her disordered hair. 

“ Hello, Mr. Bird! Come on up! ” she shouted 
back. 

“ Hello, up there! ” he called again. 

“ Hello, yourself ! Why don’t you come up ? ” 

“ You’ve got a lot of letters. Drop me your mail- 
box key.” 

Eve rushed back into the flat and, tying a thick 
cord to the key, flung it over the railing. She lis- 


66 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


tened for the metallic click on the asphalt and then, 
not wasting another second, darted into the bedroom 
and rearranged her hair and powdered her nose. 

Stanley Bird trudged up so slowly that she was 
ready and waiting by the time he finally lumbered 
into the living-room. 

“That's a goll dern climb,” he puffed, tossing a 
handful of long envelopes on the table and folding 
himself up like a camp chair on the cushion divan. 

One glance at the long envelopes and Eve knew 
what they were. Bird, too, was looking at them- as 
though he knew what they were. Eve tried to 
divert his attention by saying gushingly. 

“Awfully glad to see you, Mr. Bird. Asleep 
when you rang. Dead tired. Down town all day.” 

But Stanley was not to be diverted. “ Who’s been 
writing all that stuff? Some of your gems? ” 

“ Yes, they are mine,” she cried. “ But you 
shan’t see them.” She put out her hand and covered 
the pile. 

“Far be it from me to wade through those Par- 
nassian bogs ! When’d you send them* out ? ” 

This was too much for Eve. The tears came, and 
she didn’t even try to hold them back. 

“ Gee, I’m sorry,” said Stanley, looking as awk- 
ward as a truck horse. 

Eve sobbed and swallowed and felt very unro- 
mantic, blowing her nose and reddening her eyes 
before Stanley Bird of all men. 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


67 

“ I don't care — you can't tell me it's not pull. 
The whole thing’s pull ! I left those stories at Street 
& Smith's before noon, and they simply couldn’t 
have read them and sent them back already ! They 
— they just don’t want to find new authors — that's 
what they don't.” She worked herself into such a 
righteous rage that she actually stamped her foot as 
though she were still in pinafores. 

Stanley came over and put one hand on her shoul- 
der. “ Here, now, this won’t do. Let's look at the 
damn' things. I know a jugful about everybody’s 
business but my own, and maybe I can help. Go 
and bathe your eyes and powder your nose, and then 
you’ll feel better.” 

Eve did as she was bidden. When she came back, 
he was busy tearing open the long envelopes. 

“Always remember, Miss Kerwin,” he began, “ no- 
body gets anywhere without five-finger exercises. 
And five-finger exercises are things you’ve got to 
learn by yourself.” 

“ Well, I’ve read just about every book on the 
short story that's been written and I thought I knew 
exactly how to do it. I still believe it’s pull that gets 
such mess published as I waded through this after- 
noon in the Red Book." 

“ Now that remark alone would show that you are 
an amateur of the verdantest green. Very little 
gets in through pull. Magazines are crazy for new 
stuff. Good stuff. Let me have a look at yours.” 


68 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


Stanley began on number one of Eve’s master- 
pieces. He read aloud. " Fifty years ago to-night — 

“ That won’t do at all, but it was great stuff in 
the golden ’eighties.” He threw number one aside. 

“ But, Mr. Bird,” wailed Eve, “ that’s a really 
true story! It happened right next door.” 

Stanley was unimpressed. “ True stories don’t 
make fiction. Give me the next one.” 

He glanced at manuscript number two, then 
jumped to his feet with a laugh. “ My word, you’ve 
got a dream story ! This is rich ! ” He marched 
up and down the room chuckling. Finally he 
stopped in front of her and looked at her keenly. 

“ So, you aren’t a famous person, after all! You 
aren’t even an honest person! You are just one 
grand and glorious bluff ! ” 

Eve felt hot and angry — angry at herself for 
deceiving, and angry at him- for not giving her the 
chance to explain. And then in her great desire to 
succeed she mastered her anger and asked in a weak 
and humble voice : “ Won’t you help me? I really 

want to learn.” 

He looked at her soberly and pulled at an imag- 
inary beard. “ Well, I’ll make a bargain with you. 
I’ll try for a while and see if you’ve got it in you — 
thus far there is no evidence that you have. If I 
discover nothing more as I proceed, then you’ve got 
to promise to take a course in cooking or dressmaking 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 69 

or scrub-womaning — something that will suit you 
better. Do you promise? ” 

“ Yes, of course, but ” 

“ Now for gem number three.” He read the first 
few lines and laid it with the others. “Ah, ’tis an- 
other dream, and the dreamer awakes. It won’t do, 
my dear. Under no circumstances do they allow 
dreams in a magazine office.” 

Eve missed his meaning and blurted out : “ That’s 
perfectly absurd, if it’s a surprise. Nobody on earth 
would have known it was a dream till the very last 
line!” 

“ I knew it, me child, and I’ve read only the first 
three.” 

“And the next,” he growled : “ ' Once upon a 

time 3 — Why do you begin a story at the beginning, 
Mrs. Hans Andersen? ” 

“And where should I begin? ” she asked in amaze- 
ment. 

“ In the middle, of course. I’ll give you a famous 
formula for beginning a story: George Blake rose 
from his chair , readjusted the gardenia in his button- 
hole, slammed shut his roll-top desk, and fell dead . 
Now hand me that magazine over there.” 

He turned the pages slowly, and in about five 
minutes stopped. “ Here now, I’ll show you why 
this story sold.” 

“ You can’t show me one in there that’s as good 


;o 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


as the worst of mine! ” Eve announced. “ Pve read 
every story in that number and they’re all rotten ! ” 

Bird closed the magazine with a bang. “If that’s 
the way you feel about it, then it’s no use.” 

That brought Eve to her senses. “ Please tell me 
what you were going to say,” she begged. 

“ Young woman, you just come down from, that 
sky-scraper and lay your little pink ear to the earth. 
Indians may be coming! ” 

He opened the magazine again and read : “The 
burglar lay dead at the bottom of the wellT 

“ Trash! ” murmured Eve. 

“ Perhaps, but it gets your interest ! ” 

“ Not mine! ” she insisted, and turned bored eyes 
to the window. 

“ Well, Miss Low-high-brow, you’re not the Amer- 
ican public and, believe me, that’s the god you’ll have 
to serve unless you’re great like Conrad. Then peo- 
ple will read you even if they don’t know what you’re 
driving at.” 

“ I’d rather scrub floors.” 

“All right, I’ll give you your first job. My studio 
looks like hell.” He walked leisurely up and down 
the whole length of the room. 

She stopped him midway in one of his journeys. 
“ I’m a conceited fool, Mr. Bird, and I mill listen to 
you if you’ll tell me what to do. But frankly now, 
in that Street & Smith office, did they read my 
stories? ” 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


7 1 


“ They didn’t have to, Miss Kerwin. One line 
was enough to show them you didn’t belong. That 
doesn’t mean that you can’t belong. You’ve got as 
good a chance as any other boob. If I were you 
I’d sign up for a correspondence course and whack 
away for a year and find out all I could about short 
stories. Ten to one you’ll sell eventually, that is, if 
you have anything to say, and I think you have. If 
I’m in the neighborhood at the time, and I find you 
haven’t, I’ll see that you learn to make bread and boil 
potatoes. Everybody doesn’t have to be a writer, 
you know ! ” 

“ But I have something to say! ” She spoke with 
such conviction that Bird very nearly believed her. 

After a pause he said : “ You know, Miss Kerwin, 
when I listened to your talk last night I thought your 
name was already in the Hall of Fame, and after I 
got home I wondered why I had never heard of you. 
Then it dawned on me that you were only another 
one of those poor devils who laugh to keep from 
crying.” 

They both turned to the window and stood there, 
side by side, thinking the same thoughts and looking 
with the same unseeing eyes on the view before them. 
The lights on the island blazed and twinkled, and 
the clumsy mud-scows crept by. 

Marj’s miniature grandfather clock chimed eight. 

“ Come, Miss Kerwin, let’s go up to the gallery 


72 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


and see Fanny's First Play — that is, if you’ve got 
fifty cents to spare ? ” 

Eve reached for her little red pocket-book. “ Of 
course I have! ” 

“ Well,” he said, with mock seriousness, “ so have 
I — just fifty!” 


CHAPTER VIII 


All during the play Stanley was bursting with 
chuckles. There was no denying that it was a clever 
performance, but Eve, being a female of exaggerated 
practicality, was thinking far more of the proximity 
of her escort’s arm. It was warm and comforting. 
She leaned against it ever so daintily. There came 
a sudden response from; his elbow. She was not 
entirely inexperienced, yet she wanted to assure her- 
self that his answer was not a mistake. So she 
leaned again. This time his hand crept over and 
covered hers where it lay on the arm of the seat. 

After that, during all the dark times in the theatre, 
his hand sought hers. Always as the lights flashed 
on at the end of each act their hands flew apart, and 
Eve, at least, sat back thrilled with the drama of her 
own affairs. 

All sorts of sweet, dizzy thoughts went sizzling 
in her brain. She was going to fall in love, and she 
knew it. Perhaps she already was in love ! Yes, 
she was. She was sure she was ! 

He would be a difficult man. There was no deny- 
ing that. Yes, he would be hard to manage, but 
73 


74 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


that, after all, was one reason why he attracted her. 
Quite definitely, at the end of the second act, she 
decided to make him her husband. . . . 

Afterward, when she thought it all over, she 
couldn’t remember whether they rode back or walked, 
but she did remember distinctly that they found Marj 
still up, sewing, and that she pitched her work aside 
and made them some hot chocolate. 

Stanley drank his first cup hurriedly, and Marj 
poured him another. 

“Aw, you didn’t leave any room for sugar ! ” he 
complained, “ and I like sugar ! ” 

Then without any change of tone, he continued. 
“ Why does Eve Kerwin wear corsets ? ” 

Marj doubled up with screams of laughter. 
“ Stanley, you are the most irrelevant thing! To 
answer you in proper sequence, I know you like sugar 
and all people in Port Illington wear ’em ! ” 

He turned to Eve. “ Is that your real reason, 
Eve Kerwin?” 

“ Well, not exactly. First of all, without corsets 
my clothes wouldn’t fit. So I have to wear them if 
I don’t want to wobble like a duck.” 

“ That’s because you don’t know how to dress. 
Look at Marj ! ” 

To exhibit her better, Stanley lifted Marj from 
her chair and stood her on her feet. 

“ Yes, do look at Marj ! ” said Eve, with a great 
show of sarcasm. “ Together, we weigh one hun- 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


75 

dred and fifty-six pounds, and Marj weighs at least 
six of them all by herself! ” 

“ What if she does, Miss Smarty? All I want to 
tell you is this : Marj would know how to dress with- 
out corsets if she were a baby elephant.” 

“ Which, of course, means that Pm a baby ele- 
phant ! ” said Eve, pretending to pout. “ Well, I’m 
not ! I weigh only three pounds more than I ought 
to!” 

“ Why do you ? ” asked Stanley. He pointed the 
finger of pride at his own bosom. “ I weigh thirty- 
five pounds less than I ought to! ” 

Eve suddenly felt an ambition more consuming 
than any she had ever known in her life : to find 
those thirty-five pounds and return them to him. 
She pictured herself with a great chunk of fat, stick- 
ing a piece on here, a piece on there, much the same 
as sculptors add noses and ears and cheeks. She 
saw herself smoothing him off with her thumb until 
he became the well-rounded image his enormous 
height suggested he should be. 

“ If I were your mother!” — Eve shook her 
finger at him — “ I’d stuff you till you got that 
thirty-five pounds ! Skeletons needn’t be so 
haughty ! ” 

She darted off to the kitchen and soon returned 
with a huge slice of bread, buttered on both sides. 
“ Now, eat that ! Use this fork or you’ll get your- 
self all slippery! ” 


76 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


Stanley ate the bread and butter deliberately, and 
then looked up at Eve, who was still towering above 
him. 

“ You’re a nice mother person, Eve, aren’t you? ” 

Marj gathered up her sewing. “ This is no place 
for a respectable chaperon,” she said and gently shut 
herself in the little room. 

“ Well, you are a mother person, aren’t you, 
Eve ? ” he repeated. 

“ I don’t know what I am, but I do know that you 
can’t be well unless your nerves have little fat cradles 
to lie in.” 

Stanley got up and walked to the window. “ My 
nerves are never still long enough to lie anywhere. 
They’re scraping and scratching like a flock of chick- 
ens all the time.” 

Eve followed him and put her hand on his shoul- 
der. “ Won’t you let me help you, Mr. Bird — 
Stanley, won’t you let me encourage you back to 
your work? I’d lots rather do that than be success- 
ful myself.” 

“ Oh, I can’t work! Hang it all, I can't work! ” 

Eve took his big hand in hers and coaxed him over 
to the couch, just as you lead a resisting child into 
something that you know he really longs to do. 

“ Why can’t you work? Come, tell me all about 
it — it’ll do you good to talk. Let’s sit down here 
on the couch and see what can be done.” 

“Aw, what’s the use bothering you with my 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


77 

troubles ? I’m a failure and a mess, and there's an 
end to the argument." 

“ But you’re not a failure and a mess. You’re just 
discouraged temporarily. Can’t you sell what you 
draw ? ’’ 

Perhaps in the interest that she felt for him was 
a dash of that insane passion that we all feel to run 
other people’s affairs. Perhaps it was just the re- 
awakening of that earlier emotion to gather him up 
to her bosom and keep him there for ever. 

He laughed piteously. “ Sell ! Why, I can sell 
every damn’ line that I draw! The trouble is, I 
can’t draw! I can’t see its worthwhileness any 
more. Why should I sit down and work myself to 
death over a lot of puny stuff just to make a fat 
capitalist chuckle! God! I can’t see anything any 
more but Socialism ! ’’ 

“ Why don’t you work for Socialism, then? ’’ 

“ That’s what I am doing, and I’m starving at the 
job. What’s more, I’m not even doing that well. 
But what do you know about all this ? You’re not a 
Socialist, nor anything else that I can see. You 
don’t know a blessed thing about life! If you did 
you’d see at a glance that I was a dead failure ! ” 

“ You’re — you’re not ! ’’ 

She wanted to say more, but tears choked her. 

He took her in his arms and held her tightly. 

“ There, there, dear ! Don’t you go crying over 


78 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


me, whatever you do! I’m not worth it! I’m not 
worth the salt in those tears, and salt is just five 
cents a bag ! ” 


CHAPTER IX 


One morning a week later Eve went marketing on 
First Avenue. Stanley was coming to luncheon! 
Stanley was coming ! Stanley ! She purchased two 
net reticules full of chops and salad, and milk, cheese, 
bread, butter, carrots, peas and cauliflower. Ha! 
She’d soon gather together those thirty-five missing 
pounds! To-day’s luncheon would mean two at 
least. 

She scraped the carrots, shelled the peas, washed 
the salad, turned the cauliflower head down in a bowl 
of water. The waste from her vegetables filled a 
dish pan to the brim. 

“ Great Caesar,” she thought, “ more to throw 
away than there is to eat! Regular withered city 
trash!” 

Then she put the carrots and peas on to cook. In 
the bottom of Marj’s cupboard she found some Irish 
potatoes. “Fattening!” she whispered gleefully, 
putting them on the toaster to bake beside the carrots 
and peas. 

She arranged the table prettily with brown mounds 
of whole-wheat bread, crackers, cake, cheese, celery. 
Then when everything was ready and she was light- 
79 


8o 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


ing the oven for the chops, there came a knock at 
the door that made her heart leap excitedly. 

It was exactly twelve o’clock. She hadn’t ex- 
pected him so soon. She had even secretly feared 
that he might forget to come at all. 

“ I’m terribly glad to see you! ” she said, welcom- 
ing him with both hands. 

The big blond boy laughed self-consciously, 
pushed his soft, frayed cuffs into his sleeves, and 
made a desperate attempt to keep the collar of his 
ill-fitting coat in place. 

“ How nice you look! ” Eve said, admiringly. 

“ I ought to look nice. I did my best. I bathed 
and shaved and brushed my clothes and cut my 
molasses hair as far back as I could reach. I’ve left 
the rest for you to do.” He laughed again and 
handed her the scissors from a pile of Marj’s sewing. 

“ But I’ve never cut anybody’s hair in my life ! 
I don’t know how to begin ! ” 

“ Well, you just cut! Here! Jump up on this 
chair so that you can see what you’re doing.” 

Eve scrambled up, and Stanley shouted: “Now 
then : one, two, three ! ” 

Eve timidly snipped off a great yellow chunk, and 
dropped it on the floor. 

He looked at it a little dubiously. “ You might 
go a little easier next time, and don’t cut all in one 
spot.” 

Then Eve grew courageous and clipped and 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


81 


snipped with great assurance. At last she said, 
“ Now, that’s the very best I can do! ” and jumped 
down from the chair. 

Stanley viewed himself in the long mirror between 
the windows. He shook his head dejectedly. 
“ You’d never make your living as a lady hair-cutter. 
Now I’ll have to wait till it all grows long again 
before I dare face a barber. He’d say : 4 Wife been 
cutting your hair? ’ ” Then he laughed till he shook 
all over — that soundless laugh which she had 
noticed before. 

“ Laugh out loud ! ” cried Eve, pretending to tickle 
him. “ Open your mouth wide and howl ! I heard 
you do it once! ” 

So he did open his mouth and he did laugh out big 
and loud, but shaky like an infant trying to walk for 
the first time. 

“ Well, bless its heart, it has a laugh — course it 
has, only it was afraid to let its mamma hear it! 
Now come into the kitchen with me and help me 
forward march the vegetables.” 

He tried his best to be of assistance, but he w^as 
more of a hindrance than a help. His large, clumsy 
body got in her way at every turn. 

At last the feast was ready, and they sat down at 
the little round table. He ate what she placed before 
him like a healthy, hungry child. Every time he 
looked out the window Eve slipped more vegetables 
on his plate and more milk into his glass, The more 


82 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


she gave him the more he ate, until at last she thought 
to herself: “ His legs really must be hollow! ” 
Apropos of nothing he blurted out : “ Why do you 
wear silk blouses ? If you’d kept up with the Pater- 
son silk strike I don’t believe you’d ever wear silk 
on your body again. Why, when those poor devils 
gave that demonstration in Madison Square Garden 
there were women and men, with babies in their 
arms, that had walked all the way from Paterson to 
New York City and most of them hadn’t had a bite 
of food for three days. Heroism! Why, they 
stumbled and fell all along the way, but three thou- 
sand of them managed to get there. God! I 
wouldn’t wear an inch of silk for a seat in heaven ! ” 
Eve’s back began to ache. What had she to do 
with all these terrible things that he talked about ? 

“ Would you rather I didn’t wear silk? ” she fal- 
tered. “ I never thought of the misery that’s woven 
into it.” 

“ It’s nothing to me what you wear, only I can’t 
understand how a girl like you would want to sport 
expensive clothes while three-fourths of the world 
goes hungry.” 

“ Please don’t be angry with me,” she begged. 
“ I don’t understand about things yet. Tell me what 
I ought to wear and I’ll wear it.” 

“A cotton sailor-blouse and a wool skirt, and no 
corsets. Ugh ! How I hate a woman in corsets ! ” 
Eve left him excavating a mountain of whippec! 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 83 

cream that concealed a sponge cake, and hurried into 
the bedroom. 

Presently she returned, dressed in a sailor-blouse 
and a checked skirt. Grey deer-skin sandals covered 
her feet. 

Stanley rose so suddenly that he dropped his knife 
and fork on the floor. 

“ Now I like you,” he said. “ This way you’re 
human. I hope you’ll never have fine clothes again, 
at least not till the Good Day comes, then maybe you 
won’t be the only one to wear them.” 

Eve was all warm inside with his approval. How 
splendid he was ! How noble he was ! The only 
life worth living was a life with a purpose. His 
life had a purpose. Everything he said thrilled her 
exquisitely. But being young and full of healthy 
appetite, she sat down on her side of the table to 
finish her sweet before she proceeded with her educa- 
tion. 

Stanley piled up dishes and followed her back and 
forth to the kitchen, bumping into her at every turn 
and spilling things on the way. He was so awk- 
ward that at last she made him sit down on the couch 
with the New York Times. 

“ Damned capitalist sheet ! ” he said, throwing it 
on the floor. 

Eve smiled at his petulance — it was so childish. 
Next she offered him Walling’s something-or-other 


8 4 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


on Socialism. The pages were uncut, and he occu- 
pied himself cutting them until Eve returned. 

“ Now, I want to talk to you, Stanley, and I don’t 
want you to read while I’m doing it. I want you 
to look straight at me because I’m serious.” 

He looked straight at her. 

“ What work have you done to-day ? ” 

“ None,” he answered. 

“ What yesterday? ” 

“ None! ” 

“Why?” 

“ I can’t work, I tell you. I’m too unhappy and 
lonely to work. I want to be a tramp. I’m a fail- 
ure, I tell you, and I’ll never try again.” His face 
went down into his hands and he sighed heavily. 

Eve knelt before him. and took his two hands into 
her own. He drew back suddenly, but she clung to 
him and whispered. “ Let me help you.” 

“ What can you do ? You take my advice and 
stay out of this. You’ll get your fingers burned.” 

“ I don’t care what happens to me,” she whispered. 
“ I’ve had a vision! ” Her eyes were alight, and 
her hands trembled as they closed more tightly over 
his. 

“ Please, Eve, don’t kneel down here in front of 
me — I’m nothing to kneel to! ” He tried to pull 
her to her feet. 

“ No, let me kneel. I’ve never been as happy. I 
want to help. Now listen to me : I think I love you. 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


85 

If it isn't love, it’s better, I have one thousand dol- 
lars. We can marry, take a two-room flat, and live 
on that till you’re started again. I don’t care if I 
never learn to write if I can only help you back into 
your work. Your work is the big thing to me — 
your work ! Not my work ! ” 

He looked at her aghast, staring like a stricken 
animal that sees shelter but is unable to reach it. 

She pleaded again : “ If you’re a failure and a 

tramp as you say you are, then it doesn’t much matter 
whom you marry. Perhaps you don’t care for me, 
but if I only ask you to risk what you are now, then 
all that I make you into will be mine ! And I know 
it will be something big and fine! Won’t you trust 
me? ” 

Stanley drew her, still kneeling, close up to him 
and stroked her hair. Then he kissed her, and the 
tears began to roll down his face. 

“ I haven’t anything to offer you, dear girl, but 
failure. Most likely I’ll never have anything to 
offer you but failure. I have big, brave ideas, but 
they all die ! ” 

“ But they won’t die, Stanley, if I care for them.” 
She pressed her face close to his breast and wept 
quietly. 

He kissed her hair again and again. . . . 

Later they talked about wedding rings being a 
relic of barbarism and the indissoluble marriage a 
bygone superstitition. Then he gathered her all up 


86 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


to him again and whispered : “ Yours for the Revo- 
lution !” And she clung and whispered back: 
“ Yours for the Revolution ! ” 

And when he was gone she crept into bed and 
dreamed that she had exchanged her one thousand 
dollars for bread and butter and filled a flat with it 
and turned him in to feed, and once every night she 
went to see that he was well covered with warm 
blankets so that he wouldn’t get cold while he slept. 


CHAPTER X 


They went over to Hoboken, and in ten minutes’ 
time a justice of the peace had married them. 

Eve kept her own name, not because she wanted 
to, but because, as a modern radical young woman, 
she felt she had to. Moreover, Marj insisted that 
it was the only thing to do nowadays, as of course 
one always married again and again, and an ever- 
lasting shifting of names was inconsiderate and rnixy 
for the public. 

Marj was in a fever of excitement over the fur- 
nishing of the three-dollar-and-seventy-five-cents a 
week flat that the young couple selected for their 
home. She made all her friends give what they 
could spare from their possessions. 

Her own contributions were two wool blankets and 
two cotton ones. Someone gave a bed, and someone 
else lent two Windsor chairs and a kitchen table. 
Then, with a bit of taffeta here and a splash of cre- 
tonne there, a bucket of paint and some stencils, the 
two drab little rooms overlooking the roofs were soon 
turned into an interior decorator’s dream. 

The gas stove was in the living-room, and so were 
the stationary wash-tub and sink. But Marj — oh, 
8 ; 


88 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


the genius of Marj ! — she covered them over with 
two golden India prints, and Sherlock Holmes him- 
self would never have suspected them. 

In defiance of cheap real estate announcements and 
cheaper furniture stores, the Shepherd named the 
new home The Nest. He painted the two words on 
a white enamelled board which he nailed on the door. 

The Shepherd was much excited over The Nest. 
He contributed a Soken Yamaguchi print for the 
living-room wall and a huge fishskin lantern for the 
corner. Then, by wiring the lantern, he succeeded in 
flooding the room with a soft, unearthly moon-glow 
that turned it into a sort of Chinese fairyland. 

When everything was in apple-pie order, Marj 
took Eve’s money, bought quantities of food, and 
then sent out invitations for a house-warming. 

By eight o’clock on the night appointed the guests 
began to arrive. 

First came the painter man and the sculptor man 
from the tenements across the way, and behind them 
Mr. Mullins, the painter man’s huge collie, who 
purred like a cat and thought he was a lap-dog. Mr. 
Mullins occupied the entire flat until Marj asked him 
to sit on guard over the space of floor that was under 
the cot. 

Then came an over-the-roof writer whose eyes 
were brown and deep like velvet — cut velvet, some- 
one had said, He stood in the doorway, dark- 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 89 

skinned and tall. In his hands was a Chien Lung 
bowl — his contribution to The Nest. 

“Oh, isn’t it a love!” screeched Marj, jumping 
up and down and running her thin forefinger along 
the raised houses and animals that inhabited its sides. 
“ Such blue ! Did you ever see such blue ? ” 

Eve admired it and Stanley was silent, and the 
painter man and the sculptor man discussed it in 
terms of art. Then they all discovered that there 
was no place to put it. 

Marj gave a little yelp of joy, poked her key into 
the Shepherd’s hand, and pushed him out on the 
landing. “ She can use my little Swiss bracket ! ” 

“ Where is it? ” sighed the weary Shepherd. By 
actual count he had already made sixty-five trips 
over the roof to Marj’s flat. Marking sixty-six on 
a little white paper that was pinned to the door- 
jamb, he moaned and asked again : 

“ Where is it, Marj?” 

“ In the right-hand back corner of the box-couch, 
Silly! As if you didn’t see me put it there your very 
own self ! ” 

The Shepherd went and the Shepherd came, but 
there was no Swiss bracket in his hand, and Marj, at 
first reproachful and then apologetic, decided that it 
was behind the bread-box near the dill-pickle jar. 

They nailed the bracket high up on the west wall 
in a light that caught the blue of the little bowl and 
made it gleam like a gem. 


90 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


Then, when it was placed to the satisfaction of 
everybody, the blind musician came, and it had to be 
taken down again so that he might see it with his 
fingers. 

The last arrival was Myra, the little bob-haired 
girl who was going in for education. She flung her- 
self disconsolately on the cot and groaned. 

“ Just what is the tragedy this evening, Myra ? ” 
asked the painter man sympathetically. 

“Aw, nothing; only going back to high school 
when your brain cells have gone dry makes you feel 
like a calcium when the wires are cut.” 

“Well, then, why do you go back? Ain’t you 
smart enough ? You certainly used to hold down a 
good job.” 

“No, I ain’t smart enough ! And I hate a good 
job! It’s too hard to find another one. Anyway, 
you think I want to be a stenog. all my life? ” 

“ Well, teaching’s no cinch either.” 

“ Better’n typewriting. You’re the boss and you 
can smack the kids when you’re mad.” Just then 
the big dog came out from under the cot and rubbed 
himself against her knees. “ Mr. Mullins, stop it ! 
You make as many unnecessary moves as a taxi 
driver! Stop it, I tell you! You’re all fleezy! 
Get away ! ” 

The painter man backed Mr. Mullins under the cot 
again and asked : “ Why don’t you get married ? ” 
" Who to ? ” She fairly bit off the words. “ The 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


9i 

only men worth talking to are loafers, and loafers 
make bum husbands ! ” 

Marj, who had permitted Myra to hold the stage 
long enough, burst into the conversation. “ Here, 
you! Quit sympathizing with Myra! Calamity 
Myra — that’s what she is, and this, I’m here to tell 
you, is a festive occasion ! ” 

Marj held up a high-ball. “ Here’s to The Nest, 
and here’s to the newlyweds — may they have many 
troubles and be sorry ever after! ” 

“ Bravo!” 

“ Three cheers ! ” 

“ Speech, Stanley, speech ! ” 

Stanley rose and addressed his guests. “ Well, 
I’m just going to say the goll-derndest old-fashion- 
edest thing I know how to say. This is the happiest 
day of my life, and I mean every word of it. I’ve 
just married the best woman ever, and we’re both 
going to do our share toward remaking this poor old 
world. I never realized the power that was in me 
till I met Eve Kerwin, and now I feel like a regular 
Consolidated Electric Light Company! From this 
day on there’ll be no more dawdling in my life. Just 
plain everyday doing — that’s my programme and 
that’s how I’m going to make my dreams come 
true! ” 

Mr. Mullins crawled out, sat up on his hind legs, 
and howled. 

Everybody laughed but Myra. “ See,” she wailed, 


92 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


44 even Mr. Mullins doubts the truth of your state- 
ments. He says there ain’t no such animal as hap- 
piness.” 

“ ’Deed you’re mistaken,” said the painter man. 
“ Mr. Mullins is saying: 4 Hear, hear! ’ like a reg- 
ular House of Lords. You gotta understand a dog’s 
technique same as a human’s.” 

“ Make him go away ! ” whined Myra. 44 1 hate 
dogs and dreams ! I’m going home.” 

44 Myra,” Marj scolded, 44 you’re a regular old 
sinker! Drink a cocktail and come up to the sur- 
face.” 

Everybody crowded around the table and drank 
punch and ate sandwiches and made speeches, and 
then, when there was no more to eat and drink, every- 
body said good night and trudged home. 

Eve and Stanley stood with their arms about each 
other looking out into the night. They squeezed 
their cheeks against the window-pane and slanted 
their eyes to the left for what they called 44 their 
view ” of the river. 

It wasn’t much of a view, but still they loved 
44 their ” river. To see it better they went up to the 
roof and hung over the parapet. There they got the 
full sweep of its wide, grey beauty. 

All the chimneys of Manhattan sloped away from 
them in silent miles. The boats stole up the river 
and the boats stole down the river and one that was 
very big blinked its bright eyes at them. 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


93 


Eve shivered and pressed against her husband. 

“ What is it, dear? ” 

“ I was thinking of the time when I didn’t have 
you.” 

“ Well, that’s silly, because people who haven’t 
troubles never know how to appreciate them. You 
have me now, you little Piggy-wig, and I have you 
for ever and ever and ever and ever.” 

“ Ugh, that’s a long time ! ” Eve laughed. 
“Aren’t you afraid of getting awfully bored ? ” 

“ I’ll take long vacations when it looks threaten- 
ing.” 

“ No, you won’t ! ” she declared, and clung more 
closely to him. “ You won’t want to. But tell me 
now: aren’t you glad I was a direct actionist and 
asked you to marry me ? ” 

“ Well, ra-ther. You see, I couldn’t ask you to 
marry me because you had the thousand dollars! 
Really, dear, your asking me was just the beautiful- 
est thing on earth. Just exactly what I needed : 
love and encouragement. Eve dear, we’re going to 
give the whole wide world something to gossip 
about.” 

“ I forbid you to use the word gossip in connection 
with my husband ! ” She pretended to box his ears 
and then kissed them. “ You must say we’ll give 
the whole world something to sing a cantata about 
or something to write an epic about. That’s better, 
isn’t it?” 


94 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


“ Better ? You wonderful little woman, it’s an 
inspiration! Ell make my whole life one heroic 
poem for your sake ! ” 

“And, Stan/' she whispered, “ when folks say how 
wonderful your work is, I’ll thrill warm inside be- 
cause Ell know that Pm the silent partner.” 

“And, Eve, dear, when folks say : 4 Mr. Bird, how 
did you ever create such pictures?’ Til answer : 
£ May I present my wife? ’ ” 


CHAPTER XI 


Stanley spoke his contempt for curtains, so there 
were none. The windows thrown wide open for air 
let in the long, slanting rays of a hot afternoon sun. 
All day the heat had been unbearable, but now at 
last a timid breeze began to blow across the city. 

At the centre table Eve was packing a pasteboard 
box. Stanley, with his huge shoulders humped, 
stood watching her. 

She carefully folded a glittering blue taffeta under 
clouds of chiffon and laid it on top of something soft 
and pink. 

“As much as I hate these fine clothes, Eve, I can’t 
bear seeing you give them away,” Stanley said, 
throwing himself down on the cot and burying his 
face in a cushion. “ Seems exactly like dead people 
and a coffin.” 

Eve stopped her packing and went over to him. 
“ You mustn’t think I want them ever any more, 
dear. I don’t. You’ve shown me things so much 
bigger and better than pretty clothes.” 

Stanley put his arms about her. 

Love is mighty and intangible, and there has never 
95 


96 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


been one word in any language big enough to ex- 
press its thrill. 

The courtship of Stanley and Evelyn had been so 
short and serious that they had had no time for what 
they called the billing and cooing of silly lovers. 
But now not even they could longer resist the power 
of the “ little language.” Who can ? It was in- 
vented in the Garden of Eden, and ever since then 
each pathetic little Adam has been struggling to tell 
some pathetic little Eve the same thing: “ I love 
you.” 

Evelyn sat close to Stanley whispering lovely 
nothings into his ear. But Stanley lay immovable 
and silent. 

“ I tell you, sweetheart, I couldn’t wear silks and 
satins now that I know how they’re made. Please, 
please, dear, don’t feel unhappy. Think of my 
frivolous cousin Betty, twirling about in them. She’ll 
be the happiest girl in Madison.” 

They sat there silent, with their arms about each 
other, till the dark came down and obscured the last 
chimney pot in the grey district. 

With his fingers automatically smoothing her hair 
back from her temples, he was probably dreaming 
great pictures: Dew-witches spun of silver drops; 
star-lighters made of wishes ; fairy godmothers 
wrought of coppery gold. Eve, happy in his near- 
ness, was making mental lists of cabbages, beets, 
butter, and eggs, 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


97 

She got up from the cot rather suddenly and 
stretched her arms. 

“ Evelyn ! ” he said sharply. He always called 
her Evelyn in reproof. “ Please don’t jump up like 
that without telling me. It upsets me terribly — 
just as though you slammed a door in my face! ” 

“ Stan, dear, I’m awfully sorry. I got fidgety 
sitting still so long. Then I remembered that we 
have nothing in the house for supper and nothing 
for to-morrow, and to-morrow’s Sunday. There’s 
heaps of marketing to do.” 

“We don’t need anything to-morrow. Brown 
bread and butter is good enough for anybody ! ” He 
turned his face to the wall. 

Eve sat down by his side and began coaxing him 
as she would a sulky child. “ Stan, dear, you 
haven’t had a breath of outdoors to-day. Come 
along — there’s a good lamb. We’ll go for a nice 
walk. All the hucksters are out on First Avenue, 
and you know they make pictures in your mind. 
Won’t you come ? ” 

He got up suddenly and splashed around in the 
bathroom. Eve found his hat for him, got the two 
big net bags down from the hook on the closet door, 
and they started out together. 

As they reached the street he asked petulantly: 
“ Why don’t you say something? ” 

“ I was afraid of disturbing your picture, dear. 


98 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


You know you once told me that you like to get the 
first glimpse of the outside in silence.” 

“ You’ve got a good memory for some things, 
Eve ! ” Then, without warning, he left her, dashing 
off towards the little Branch Library and shouting 
back that he preferred it to pedlars’ carts. 

“All right, dear,” she said, “ I’ll come for you 
when I’ve finished shopping.” 

On First Avenue she bought an enormous cabbage, 
two heads of lettuce, and Irish and sweet potatoes. 
Then at the butcher’s shop she got butter and second- 
quality eggs and half a pound of chopped beef. It 
was the cheap kind made out of scraps ; but it was 
fresh, and she knew how good it would taste when 
it was fried quickly with plenty of fat to make it 
brown and crisp. 

The two net bags grew heavier and heavier, and 
the weight of them pulled at her shoulders, but she 
struggled on down the Avenue to see if she could 
buy anything else that was cheap and palatable. 

“Rice!” she said to herself. “I forgot rice.” 
She bought the broken kind at the disorderly little 
Jewish store on the comer at a saving of six cents 
a pound. 

She found Stanley sitting outside the Library on 
the stone steps. “ They haven’t got a book worth 
reading ! ” he told her shortly. Then, as he took the 
bags out of her hands, he demanded : “ Why did 

you buy so much ? ” 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


99 


“ That isn’t too much, dear. At any rate, it 
hasn’t cost much. Money goes far when you market 
this way.” 

At the mention of money he glared at her savagely. 
“Why are you always talking about money? ” 

She smiled up at him bravely. “ Because I’m 
learning to be a wonderful haus-frau ! ” 

“ ’Tisn’t that. It’s because you love money!” 
He laughed as though he had scored a point. Then 
he carelessly swung both bags over his shoulder. 

“ Careful ! Eggs ! ” she cried. 

He looked at her reprovingly. “ How often do 
I have to tell you not to raise your voice, Evelyn? 
Suppose the eggs do get smashed ? ” 

“ I’m sorry,” she murmured. “ But it would be 
so awful to throw away twenty-five cents ! ” 

Then, as usual, after a streak of unkindness, Stan- 
ley began to soften. He smiled down at her with 
a half-wink in his eye and said : “ We’ll have plenty 
of money. Don’t you worry, little lady. You stick 
by me and I’ll show you. I’ve got a whale of an 
idea for a new sort of illustrating and it’ll go big. 
Don’t you worry — time is all I need, just a little 
time for developing things.” 

And Eve, always resilient, grew calm again and 
her throat relaxed. Laughing together, they skipped 
up the five flights of stairs to The Nest. 

Stanley seated himself at the window, notebook 
in hand, and sketched page after page. Every page 


100 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


as he finished it he would tear off and crumple into 
his pocket. 

Eve pulled out the little folding table, stretched 
its legs, and set it daintily for supper. 

She washed the salad, took the bottle of milk from 
under the cold water faucet, peeled the silver paper 
from the cheese, boiled some potatoes with their jack- 
ets on, fried the meat, and when all was ready called 
her lord to the feast. 

“ I’m going to work to-night, Eve, dear. It's 
taken me a long time to plan out that comic series. 
Editors make me laugh — think they don’t want any- 
thing too 1 new! Well, you watch ’em! I’ll block 
out the first six to-night. Stuff ought to run along 
for months. Awfully good idea, Eve. You see, 
I’m going to run comics that fit into the day of the 
week. Nobody does that. They all just have 
comics regardless of fit. ‘ Rainy Sundays,’ — can’t 
you see ’em? ‘Wash Mondays,’ ‘Ironing Tues- 
days.’ You see, it won’t only be about the home, 
but this damned regularity in people’s households 
affects even business. You know yourself how it 
affects meals and comforts. Think of a woman hav- 
ing wash-day at the end of the week instead of at 
the beginning! Why, it simply can’t be done.” 

Stanley stuffed a large uncut lettuce leaf into his 
mouth, leaving a generous smear of cottonseed oil and 
vinegar on his chin. 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


IOI 


“ I’ll run these things for a living and we’ll do the 
big stuff for fame.” 

Eve loved to hear him say “ we.” It made her 
feel helpful to him, and that was what she longed to 
be above everything else in the universe. 

“ That’s fine, Stan. I’ll trot into the other room 
and shut the door so that you won’t be disturbed.” 
She felt so happy she was afraid she’d weep. 

Stanley had made a million notebook sketches but 
he hadn’t even unpacked his drawing-board since 
their marriage, and Evelyn, so afraid of not waiting 
for the psychological moment, had never alluded to 
the fact. It was her secret plan not to urge him, 
but just to be there to applaud when the miracle 
happened. 

After supper she moved about in a seventh heaven 
of expectation, clearing the table and quietly stacking 
the dishes in the sink. 

She didn’t wash a single dish. She didn’t even 
turn the cold water on the butter and milk. They 
could spoil for all she cared so long as Stanley was 
working. 

Out of the big box under the cot she got his 
drawing-board. Then putting thumb-tacks, paper, 
pencils, ink, and crayons within easy reach, she crept 
off into the other room and closed the door. 

She lifted the shoe-box out of the closet and made 
a low stool of it, so that she could sit with her ear at 


102 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


the keyhole. “ Scratch, scratch,” went the pen across 
the smooth surface of the paper. 

“ I knew I could do 1 it ! I knew it ! ” she whis- 
pered. Tears ran down her cheeks, and all the pent- 
up rivers of happiness in her soul overflowed. 

Towards midnight she heard him walk about the 
room and then throw, himself down on the cot. He 
was resting. Cramped and stiff from her long vigil, 
she rose and softly lifted the shoe-box back into place 
on the closet floor. 

She hadn’t been able to see through the keyhole 
what he was actually drawing, but she knew it was 
wonderful. Come to think of it, she never had quite 
understood those great dreams of his, but the comics 
were clear enough, and the comics meant bread and 
butter and home. Those great dreams — she won- 
dered sometimes if he understood them himself. . . . 

But this — this was sweet, everyday reality. The 
whole sacred security of their lives together stretched 
out ahead in one long, shining road. She bowed 
humbly before its loveliness, almost afraid to cross 
the threshold and lay hold of it. 

Once more she sang in her heart : “ The Assyrian 
came down like a wolf on the fold ! ” but this time 
it was a song of victory for Stanley. For her, too, 
because there was something glorious that awaited 
her once Stanley’s success was assured. They had 
planned for it together. They had bought its 
layette a thousand times out of the windows a.t 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


103 


Best’s. They had even picked out its University 
and put it up at its father’s fraternity. . . . 

Thrilled with the fulfilmment of every glorious 
hope in life, Eve tiptoed across the threshold to her 
husband. . . . 

Over the big white paper were hundreds of unin- 
telligible scratches, and on the cot was Stanley sob- 
bing convulsively with his face buried in his arms. 

A great unseen mallet struck Eve on the head, and 
that part of her brain that was meant for happiness 
went numb. 

She sat down beside her husband and put her face 
close to his. If only she, too, could weep perhaps 
her eyes would not feel so hot and dry. 

“It wouldn’t come! It wouldn’t come!” he 
sobbed. She put her mother arms tightly about him 
and said : 4 It doesn’t matter, dear, it doesn’t mat- 
ter ! ” But her voice sounded strange in her own 
ears as though it came from a cavern somewhere 
far off. 

“ I’m a failure ! I’ll never do anything ! Why 
didn’t you let me alone where I was ? I want to go 
away ! I want to die ! ” 

Presently she coaxed him up to the roof where he 
could see the great pictures again : where the sky 
was the black breath of God ; where the grey river 
squirmed and wriggled like the snake that drank 
the ocean; where the dark roofs were inquisitive 
giants with silly chimney-pot heads ; where the whole 


104 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


world stretched out before them to be conquered — 
the whole world, big and hard, but inspiring. 

At last he put his arms about her. “ This’ll pass, 
Eve. I’ll show ’em yet ! It’s in me, girl, if I weren’t 
just so afraid and nervous. You’ll stay and help 
me, won’t you, Eve ? I need you ! ” 

“ Yes, Stanley, darling. I’ll stay and help if — 
if you need me.” 


CHAPTER XII 

The summer spent itself and autumn came, but 
Stanley made no more pilgrimages to his drawing- 
board. 

Eve waited tensely by his side, and while she 
waited her own old ambition began to stir to life. 
At first it was a poor little starveling, and she re- 
fused to notice it. But it grew lusty and strong 
and at last she acknowledged it as her own, and gave 
it the sunniest room in the house of her brain. 

Her thoughts on the subject were choppy and dis- 
connected : “ It won’t interfere with him. Til help 
just the same. I must. I thought it was dead. It 
isn’t. If I had been able to make him succeed it 
migtht have died — but it’s alive — all alive — my 
old desire to do something — to be somebody!” 

For the next few weeks she stole away by herself 
to public parks, to libraries, to her own room, and 
studied the pages of magazines — all grades of 
magazines, even down to the poorest. 

She tore plots apart and fitted them together again. 
She manufactured plots of her own similar to those 
she dissected. Finally, she was able to discover the 
105 


106 THE GLORIOUS HOPE 

human quality in the poorest story in the cheapest 
periodical. 

In her secret excitement she forgot to be practical 
and unhappy. All her grey heaven burst into red- 
dening sunsets again. 

And then one morning Stanley’s manner showed a 
peculiar poise. He went straight to his drawing- 
board and by early afternoon had finished a cartoon 
and a five hundred word essay. Without speaking, 
he took them both and hurried off. 

At five he returned with a kiss for Eve’s lips and 
twenty-five dollars for her hand. 

“ See what my soul storm did for me last summer, 
Eve ! Sunned up the mouldy corners ! I sold it to 
the American and told them I had to have the money 
now.” 

Eve hugged him joyously. “ Stan, dear, if you’ll 
do this every week we — we can have one and send 
it to Yale, too, when it’s grown! Wouldn’t it be 
wonderful ? ” 

He held her close. “We ought to have one even 
if we can’t afford it. Thar s the trouble with you 
darling, you’re too 1 practical. You see too far ahead. 
These people in this neighborhood have one a year 
and they eat, too.” 

“ But not lamb chops ! ” She laughed, patting his 
cheek. “ I have a lamb chop standard for children ! ” 

“ Well, you old sweet silly, they won’t need lamb 
chops for at least two years, and by that time we’ll 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


107 

be — what do they call it ? — rolling in wealth ! I’ve 
shown you I can make these fellows buy what I draw ! 
Let’s not be too conservative! ” 

“All right, if you’ll sell one a week for a month 
I’ll feel we’re safe. Oh, Stan, dear, I want one so 
much — I don’t mean one drawing, I mean twelve 
babies, or as many as in a whole orphan asylum, 
with all the other women looking on and envying 
me! ” 

Eve affected a rollicking song and tucked her 
stories away again. They could wait. Everything 
could wait, now the miracle had happened. Yes, she 
repeated to herself emphatically, everything could 
wait. But something deep down in her kept put- 
ting the question : “ Why should everything wait ? ” 

In the dark silence of each night she tried to 
analyze her emotions. Did she really want to write ? 
Well, perhaps her ego did, but her heart wanted 
quite another career. Why couldn’t she have both ? 
Probably she could, but not just now with Stanley’s 
success at the turning-point. Wasn’t she, after all, 
only an ordinary woman with the ordinary set of 
emotions and desires ? Probably she was. Wouldn’t 
home and babies and a husband and the sing-song 
routine of motherhood satisfy her ? She wasn’t quite 
sure. But of one thing she was sure : everything in 
her must be subordinated to Stanley. She must 
keep herself in readiness like a Jewish woman who 
hopes to be mother to the Messiah. 


io8 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


But the miracle never happened again. 

Eve’s brain developed into a sort of two-story 
apartment. On the lower floor she kept the butter 
and eggs and cabbage and chopped meat, and along 
with them the fact that her thousand dollars was 
dwindling away. On the upper sunlit floor she kept 
her love for Stanley and the dream cradles of the 
twelve babies. On the dark stairway between, she 
crouched and labored at her stories, hounded by the 
fear of penury and failure. 

For many weeks she labored, grimly determined 
to save Stanley and herself and their love from de- 
struction. Money must come from somewhere and 
come very soon. 

One afternoon, late in November, she fluttered 
around the flat like an excited hen, and cackling 
playfully deposited her brood of six manuscripts on 
the cot beside her husband. 

As usual he was preoccupied. He did not even 
see her until she stooped and kissed the tip of his 
nose. 

“ I wish, Evelyn, you wouldn’t come on me like 
that ! I’ve warned you a thousand times not to be 
abrupt ! ” 

“ You silly old boy, I’ve been standing here ages 
and I thought you knew it. I’ve got a great, huge, 
elephantine surprise for you. Guess! No? Well, 
I’ve finished six stories all by myself! I’ve worked 
honestly and faithfully and humbly as you told me 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


109 

to, and now I want ou to tell me whether they are 
any good.” 

He frowned at her petulantly. 

“ Eve, I was planning a perfectly gorgeous pic- 
ture, and you ripped my canvas right through the 
middle ! ” 

“ Im terribly sorry, lamby-bird ! Do forgive me. 
I’ll never, never do it again ! ” 

“That’s what you always say, but you simply 
have no delicacy. You’d disturb God on the Judg- 
ment Day and then say, 4 Sorry ! ’ ” 

He dashed the manuscripts aside and strode up 
and down the room. Eve stood quietly in a corner 
and waited for his mood to change. 

Four paces this way, four paces that. He mute 
tered to himself, but included her. “ We’re damned 
hypocrites — that’s what we are ! Who are we that 
someone else should dig the sewers for us? Why 
aren’t we doing some of the dirty work? ” 

“ But we are doing some of the dirty work,” Eve 
insisted. “We cook and wash and iron and clean — 
that’s heaps, isn’t it ? ” She was mother enough to 
include him in her daily chores and he was man 
enough to accept her generosity. 

“No!” he shouted. “It’s not heaps! We’re 
degenerate Romans — that’s what we are ! Sleep- 
ing and eating and making love up here for months ! 
It’s got to stop ! I tell you, I’m serious ! I’ve got 
to accomplish something!” 


no 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


“ You’ll never accomplish things, dear, if you con- 
tinue to isolate yourself. You can’t sit on top of a 
sky-scraper and do things for the little people in the 
street below. You’ve got to be down on the side- 
walk to get in touch with the little people.” 

“ Eve, you are absolutely the most impossible per- 
son I have ever met! You never will understand 
that I won’t go among people till I succeed ! ” 

“ You’re hungry, dear. I’ll feed you, and then, 
please, will you look at my stories ? ” 

He drank his hot chocolate, four cups of it, and 
then, with a face entirely expressionless, read through 
her manuscripts. 

“ Well,” he said at last, “ you certainly are an 
example of the feminist movement all right! An 
absolutely ignorant female, you come to New York 
determined to conquer in the short-story game — in 
fact, pretend you have conquered before you’ve sold 
a line! There’s no use arguing the matter — 
women’s brains and men’s brains are different ! ” 
Then the impossible happened : he tore the pages 
through the middle, tossed them into the waste-paper 
basket, and laughed in her face. 

The next moment his arms were about her, hold- 
ing her so tightly that she ached — not her soul — 
her soul was dead — just her body. 

“ Eve, darling, tell me why I do such things ! I’m 
a million times sorry ! I’d give anything to undo 
that ! I didn’t mean to hurt you, but, dearest, you 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


hi 


have such energy and you seem so unbreakable that 
sometimes you nearly drive me crazy. Forgive me! 
Say you forgive me ! ” 

He kissed her eyes and her nose and both the little 
warm spots behind her ears. 

Of course she forgave him. She even kept on 
loving him. But deep down in her heart she knew 
that her feeling for him was no longer mate-love. 
It had changed to mother-love. 


CHAPTER XIII 


If only Eve had had someone to talk to, the hurt . 
in her soul might have healed. But she had no one. 
Marj was gone — something had happened to her 
lungs, and in order to take proper care of her the 
Shepherd had married her and carried her off to a 
shack in the Adirondacks; and none of the kindly 
artist folk ever came to The Nest now, as it was 
understood Stanley didn’t want people “ dropping 
in.” 

One evening late in December, when her thousand 
dollars were about gone, she slipped out and wan- 
dered along the river front in the drizzling rain. 

The tenement windows were ablaze, and she could 
see domestic drama going on in many of the curtain- 
less rooms. There a mother was nursing her baby 
to sleep. Through the next window she watched a 
man thrashing a woman. Which was the way to 
live, she wondered, quietly like the nursing mother, 
or violently like the fighting couple ? Did it, could 
it mend things up for them to* beat each other? . . . 

She turned and looked over the rock wall into the 
river. The cold rain beat on her head and ran in 
little streams from her fingers. 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


”3 

“ If only I could mix with the river and be lost like 
the rain ! ” she whispered, watching the drops splash 
like little skiffs, then flatten and disappear. “It 
would be so easy ! ” 

Then she drew back in a sort of shamed terror as 
she thought of Stanley waiting through the years for 
her return. 

To shake off the morbidness of her mood she lifted 
her shoulders squarely and sang the Toreador’s song. 
Soon the great thumping measure brought her cour- 
age back. The night, the storm, her tense throat, 
the sound of her own voice all filled her with a sort 
of reckless triumph. She lifted her head higher and 
higher and sang out louder and louder. 

Then suddenly she broke into heavy sobs. She 
staggered blindly forward and almost ran into a man 
who was just emerging from the shadow of the 
Recreation Building. She didn’t turn and flee, as 
she would ordinarily have done. Her protective in- 
stincts were numbed, and life, as she knew it, could 
inflict no further hurt. 

The man was the first to speak. 

“ I’m sorry, Mrs. Bird! You’re in trouble, aren’t 
you?” 

The shock of the unexpected encounter had 
checked Eve’s sobs. “Who are you?” she asked 
helplessly. 

“ Don’t you remember me, Mrs. Bird ? ” 

In the rain-veiled light Eve could only see that he 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


1 14 

was tall and dark like a Mexican and that his body 
was heavy without being fat. 

“ Do I know you ? ” 

“ Of course you know me. I attended your house- 
warming long ago. I came with my friend, Mr. 
Mullins. Surely you remember Mr. Mullins ! ” 

“ Oh, you are the Painter Man ! ” Eve cried. “ Of 
course I remember you now, but it’s all so long ago 
and I’ve seen you only once or twice since. How’s 
Mr. Mullins ?” 

To an outsider it would have seemed idiotic for 
anyone to stand in the rain and ask after a dog. But 
it didn’t occur to Eve that it was idiotic, and the 
Painter Man answered in all seriousness : 

“ Mr. Mullins is boarding in the country. You 
see, Mrs. Bird, the truth is that five flights of stairs 
are just a little too many for a person of Mr. Mullins’ 
yeSrs and dignity. Last summer while we were at 
Cape Cod together we talked the matter over, and 
Mr. Mullins hinted that if it was all the same to me 
he would like to stay on at the Cape. So I came 
home alone.” 

It was strange that news of Mr. Mullins should 
seem so' comforting to Eve. She wanted the Painter 
Man to go on talking about him for ever, for his 
voice was so kind, so deferential, so courteous, that 
it was like balm to her wounds. 

“ You must miss him,” she murmured. 

“ I do, and I’m sure Mr. Mullins misses me ; but, 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


ii5 

as I told him in parting, we would both have to learn 
to get on without each other/’ 

Then, as though he had noticed for the first time 
that Eve was hatless and that her umbrella was 
closed and dragging limply in her fingers, the Painter 
Man said : 

“ Hadn’t you better let me open your umbrella for 
you ? ” 

“ No, thank you. I want the rain to beat down 
on my head. It feels so nice and cool. You like it 
yourself ! ” 

“ But I’m a man.” 

The same old thing! Eve answered rather 
sharply: “ That’s so different, is it?” 

“ Only, my child, in the length of the hair ! ” 

Eve laughed in spite of her gloom. “ I thought 
you were going to tell me that women were fragile 
vessels, and that they have no logic and that their 
brains weigh less than men‘s.” 

“ Not at all. Brain has no sex, and, judging by 
what women go through from the cradle to the cre- 
matorium, mere man is no match for them in this 
business of endurance.” ' 

Pie was talking to her as one human being to 
another — in fact, quite as frankly and honestly as 
he was accustomed to talk to Mr. Mullins. No 
wonder Mr. Mullins adored him ! 

“ It’s strange I never see you on the street, Mr. 


n6 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


Painter Man. Do you still live up here in the 
tenements? ” 

“ Yes, I’m still one of your three thousand neigh- 
bors. But it isn’t so very strange that you never see 
me. For a long time you’ve been walking the streets 
without seeing very much of anything. That’s why 
I’ve known that you’re in trouble. At night I’ve 
often watched you from my windows walking up 
and down the river front. To-night in the storm I 
thought it must be you, and from the way you were 
acting I was afraid something was hurting you very 
badly. I wondered if I could help you. I talked 
the matter over with my alter ego, and he said : ‘ By 
all means, go to her ! ’ ” 

“ Your alter ego is very kind, Mr. Painter Man. 
I am hurt.” 

“ So are we all. It comes from being too certain 
about life. Life doesn’t permit us to be too certain.” 

“ But it’s horrible not being certain about things ! 
How can one build up the future without being cer- 
tain about things ? ” 

“ The future doesn’t matter — that is, one can’t 
allow it to matter.” 

He led her over to the stone river wall and they 
sat down together. For a moment they were silent, 
then Eve said : 

“ But I live entirely in the future. Is that wrong? 
You’re wiser and older than I am — please tell me 
what you think. I’m willing to accept anybody’s 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


ii 7 

viewpoint to-night rather than live any longer with 
my own.” 

“ It’s very foolish, my dear, to live in the future. 
It makes the Fates angry, and when they’re angry 
they play practical jokes. I’ve been through every 
sort of trouble, and now life can’t hurt me any more. 
Once I had what I thought was a great dream — I 
wanted to set life free; but it seems that life had a 
greater dream and has set me free.” 

Eve looked up at his fine calm face and wondered 
if by any chance he could be Max Beerbohm’s Happy 
Hypocrite. She would find out. If he were, then 
she, too, would seek out Mr. Aeneas, the fashionable 
mask-maker, and order a mask that would be fine, 
calm, and impenetrable. It would indeed be a great 
comfort not to have one’s soul showing all the time 
like a slovenly petticoat. . . . 

“Again, my dear, it’s this frightful business of 
youth that makes you suffer so. I have to look down 
a long line of years to you — I’m forty. I used to 
have wild impulses, sudden angers, great socialistic 
schemes, anarchistic upheavals — world dreams that 
never work themselves out in the mind of any one 
man. I saw the ideal commonwealth just around the 
comer, and it wasn’t because I was out of a job, 
either.” 

“ But most Socialists are out of a job,” ventured 
Eve. 

“ Very naturally, my child. Successful, normal 


n8 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


people never have time to 1 think about what’s wrong 
with the world. They only have time to make the 
world wrong.” 

“ I’m getting cold, Mr. Painter Man. Don’t you 
think we’d better walk? ” 

They splashed around in the pools of water up and 
down the cobbled street. Suddenly he laughed a 
little friendly laugh. 

“ Tell me what you are laughing at, Mr. Painter 
Man.” 

“ I’m laughing at all the people in the world who 
are trying to settle other people’s problems. I’m 
laughing at you, for you are trying to settle your 
husband’s problems, aren’t you ? What an impudent 
child ! His problem is his and your problem is yours , 
and, even if this weren’t the case, the only way one 
ever can help another is by just sitting about on 
call.” 

It seemed to< Eve that he was saying something 
that was at the bottom of her own mind. 

“ Then, do you really think I should go ahead and 
develop myself regardless of him:? ” She asked it 
rather breathlessly, as if she hoped that he would 
agree with her. “ It sounds rather dreadful. I 
thought it was necessary to give my husband my 
constant attention.” 

“ It probably isn’t. People hinder each other, but 
they seldom help. That’s why each person ought to 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


119 

live alone. Thrusting the machinery of one’s life 
on another is a sort of lesser immorality.” 

“ You’ve never been married, I see.” 

“ Oh, everyone is married, you know, if not to a 
wife and children, then to ideas and obsessions.” 

“ But children, I mean real children ? ” Eve asked 
the question with a tenderness that women use when 
there is a baby in the next room. “ Mr. Painter 
Man, have you any really truly children ? ” 

“ Oh, perhaps I have, and perhaps I only have 
brain children,” he answered. “And you — do you 
want real children ? ” 

“ Yes — I want real children. They are a sort of 
glorious hope of mine, but they were much more real 
before I married than they are now.” 

He drew her wet arm; through his wet arm, and 
for a few moments longer they walked up and down 
the dripping water front in a silence that Eve found 
as comforting as speech. 


CHAPTER XIV 

As she opened the door the first thing Stanley said 
was : “ What I want to be is a damned capitalist ! ” 

She hurried into the little bathroom and began 
peeling off one dripping garment after another. 
“ Sounds awfully interesting, Stan,” she called back, 
“ but how do you square that with your views on 
Socialism ? ” 

“ Well, all I can say is that under the present sys- 
tem anybody who isn’t a capitalist is a damned fool. 
What I mean is, vote the Socialist ticket if you vote 
at all, but accumulate all the dirty stuff you can. 
Nobody’ll listen to you if you’re poor.” 

She appeared tying the cord of her bath-robe and 
threw herself across the cot. 

“ Well, honey, I’ve always felt that way, but it 
rather shocks me to hear it from you.” 

The door bell rang. Eve reached out and pressed 
her finger across his lips, whispering. “Milkman! 
Don’t answer ! Can’t possibly pay him ! ” 

The bell rang again, viciously. Then a piece of 
white paper was slipped under the door and heavy 
footstep's stumped off down the stairs. 

120 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


121 


They waited a moment, then Stanley went to* the 
door and picked up the paper. 

He stood blinking at it, bewildered. “ Why, Eve, 
it’s an eviction notice ! ” 

She tried hard to steady her voice. “ We’re two 
weeks behind, dear.” 

He sank into a chair and looked at her with eyes 
full of a terrible pity for himself and for her. 

A heavy silence settled on The Nest, and Eve lay 
for a long while quietly looking over the advertise- 
ments in the Times. 

Suddenly she bolted up. “ Stan, I’m going on 
the stage ! To-morrow morning I’m going to visit 
every office in this city.” Through all her being 
vibrated new hope and new joy. 

“ I’ll be doggoned if you will ! ” He came over 
and jerked the paper out of her hands. “ I’ll get a 
job! You’ve contributed your thousand and you 
won’t put in another cent ! ” 

She had ceased long ago to be hurt by his tempers. 
Now they only made her feel more sorry for him. 

She asked quietly: “ What kind of a job can you 
get, dear? ” 

“ I don’t know. I’ll look up and down the list and 
find something.” 

She knew he wouldn’t, but she answered : “ That 
would be great ! ” 

He grew happy again. His face lighted with the 
magic of a million new ideas, “ Yes, Til get a job 


122 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


and we’ll get along fine. I’ll draw on the side. Yes, 
siree, I’ll get a job if it’s only cracking stones ! ” 

Eve crept over and sat on the arm of his chair. 
“ Dearest, I’ve got something to tell you that I’ve 
been hiding. We still have twenty dollars — but 
just twenty. I was afraid to pay the rent.” The 
hot tears smarted in her eyes. “ You go down the 
first thing in the morning and pay it. We’ve got to 
live somewhere. We can’t go out into the street.” 

He put his big arms gently around her and wiped 
her tears away with his handkerchief. “ Eve, dar- 
ling, don’t cry! It’ll be all right! This is the best 
thing that ever happened to me. I’ve been dreaming 
like a fool. This’ll give me my chance to show you 
that I am a man. I won’t look for a job. My job’s 
right here at my drawing board. I’ll make a sched- 
ule for work and, by Heck, this time I’ll stick! ” 

He left her side and began to' rule off a piece of 
paper. 

After twenty minutes he handed her the completed 
scheme. It was beautifully lettered, and fantastic 
illustrations decorated the top and bottom of the 
sheet. 

6 a.m. — Rise — Bath — Short walk — Breakfast. 

7 till io — Work on Comics. 

io till 12 — Lettering for some advertising office. 

Luncheon and walk. 

i till 5 — Illustrating for some publishing house. 

Recreation — Supper. 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


123 


After supper — Designing. 

Eve read it enthusiastically. “ That’s a peach of 
an idea, Stan ! If you can stick to that you’ll be a 
capitalist before you know it.” 

“ Stick ! ” His tone was scornful. “ Maybe you 
think I won’t stick — you’ve got as much confidence 
in me as you have in a flea! — but I’ll show you! ” 
He strode angrily into the other room and pinned the 
schedule over his bed. 

Eve had made up her mind long since that Stanley 
should never accuse her of forcing him into unpleas- 
ant situations. She hated women like the heroine 
in Martin Eden. It was criminal to beg a husband 
or a lover to get a job while his soul was developing. 

When Stanley came back, Eve pressed his cheeks 
with the flat palms of her hands. “ I do believe in 
you, dear ! ” she said. “ I know you are a great man ! 
I knew it the first time I saw you.” 

“Now, that’s the way I like to hear you talk! 
Helps more than anything! You’ve got to believe 
in me even if the whole world refuses to be such a 
fool.” 

“ But I’m not a fool, darling. In all my dreams 
I see you doing big things. Something has been 
wrong. Perhaps I have been wrong — I don’t quite 
know.” 

“ No, it’s not your fault, dear, except perhaps that 
your energy scares me a little. It’s my fault, but if 


124 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


you’ll just believe in me this one time more I’ll prove 
things to you ! ” 

Eve pressed close to< him. “ I do believe in you, 
Stanley, I do believe in you ! I’ll get along on the 
wee-est bit of money — you know I can, if you’ll 
just put down on paper those magical things you 
have in your brain. Will you, darling, will you ? ” 

The beauty in his eyes lifted her up out of fear, 
out of poverty, out of everything that was low and 
sordid and hateful, and once more she stood on the 
peaks by his side, ready to brave for his sake all life 
and all death. 

But after the lights were out and Stanley was 
sleeping quietly under his scheme for the morrow, 
the things the Painter Man had said to her began to 
eddy around in her brain in little whirlpools of new 
thought. His voice came back to her, his charming, 
quiet voice : “ You are a capable human being,” he 
had said to her in parting. “ Surely there is some- 
thing big that you can do. Why should you throw 
your ambition under the heel of anybody, no matter 
how much you love that body ? Even if your stories 
did seem poor to him, is one’s own man a fair critic r 
Go out ! Breathe ! Learn ! Live ! ” . . . 

At six o’clock the next morning Stanley’s alarm 
clock went off. He picked it up and slung it across 
the room. It buzzed with life for a moment, then 
died. 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


125 

Eve crawled to the foot of the bed and slipped to 
the floor. 

“ Why are you getting 1 up, Eve ? It’s midnight ! 
Don’t you ever feel tired ? ” He growled and turned 
over. 

“ It’s six, dear, and I’ve got lots to do to-day. 
Your scheme says you are getting up at six, too. 
Better come and eat brekky with me.” 

“ Brekky ! ” he muttered. “ Lord ! Baby-talk ! 
Ugh ! ” He shuddered and hid his head under the 
pillow. 

She bathed and came back into the room. “ Stan, 
honey, you’d better get up. You’ll be all mad at 
yourself if you don’t get up when you said you 
would.” 

“ I’ll start the scheme working at seven. I was a 
nut to figure on six o’clock. Let me alone.” 

She drank a bottle of milk, dressed herself very 
carefully, and slipped out into the early morning 
world to find something to do. 


CHAPTER XV 


In a classified telephone directory she looked up 
theatrical agencies. She copied them down in a long 
list and then started on her rounds. 

There must be something in well-set-upness. The 
waiting-room in one big agency was so crowded that 
Eve had to stand. She leaned against the wall and 
looked from one to another at all the girls and 
women who were there, like her, looking for an 
“ engagement.” 

At last the manager opened his sacred door. He 
bowed agreeably to some, shook his head negatively 
at many, then catching sight of Eve motioned her to 
follow him. 

In his private office he placed her where the light 
would fall directly on her face, and asked: “Any 
experience ? ” 

“ Only in an amateur way.” 

“ What do you want? ” 

“ Anything! ” 

He was a big English-looking person with curly 
hair parted in the middle. His face had a wrinkled 
kindliness about it, and when he laughed it was not 
so much at her as at all her kind. 

126 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


127 


“ Of course, you know there are a million of your 
brand floating about the offices. You know that 
most plays are cast in July and August and that it 
is now January. And of course you know that there 
are some wonderful actresses out there in that wait- 
ing-room who haven’t had any breakfast.” He said 
it all in a well-meaning, fatherly way. 

Eve’s heart thumped. It was true that she had 
had breakfast, but she wasn’t quite sure about lunch- 
eon herself. Her breath came so fast as she stood 
there facing him that she felt it cold on her front 
teeth. “ That — that may all be true, but — I — I 
came late, and if there wasn’t something about me 
that was unusual, why did you call me in first?” 
Her words sounded thin to herself, as though they 
had been squeezed through a very narrow space. 

He pointed to a chair. “ Please sit down. The 
very fact that you are frank enough to ask such a 
question, answers you. You are unusual.” 

Eve’s legs gave way and she sank rather heavily 
on the hard golden-oak chair. 

“ You see,” he continued, “ the stage is getting to 
be more and more a matter of type. Just now I 
need a dark woman like you to play a rather fine part 
as an organ grinder’s wife. I’ll give you a note to 
the producer, but I’m afraid your mere lack of tech- 
nique will bar you out.” 

“ Oh, don’t tell him, Mr. Sumner — you are Mr. 
Sumner, aren’t you? I’m not stupid — truly, I’m 


128 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


not, and maybe I can do it. At least let him 1 find out 
for himself.” 

Mr. Sumner laughed. “ Oh, he’ll find out all 
right!” 

“ Take a note,” he said to his stenographer, and 
when it was finished and signed he handed it to Eve 
saying, “ Go- over now, and see what happens.” 

The Broadway manager was the wrong type of 
Jew — a frightful little toad, as wide as he was high. 
He smoked a huge cigar and squinted at Eve through 
jets of smoke that encircled his head. If it hadn’t 
been her business to be gracious, she might have 
slapped his face. 

“Well, she looks the part, don’t she, boys?” he 
croaked, reaching up and patting Eve familiarly on 
the back. “ Here! Read the part! Go on, Jen- 
kins, and be the organ grinder.” 

How Eve struggled through to the end was a 
mystery to her. She skipped lines. She read other 
people’s speeches. The Jewish frog glared and 
jumped at her, but by some miracle she found herself 
at last down on the street with the typewritten part 
in her hands. She had been directed to learn as 
much as possible before the rehearsal at the Bruns- 
wick Theatre the next morning. 

Up the steps into Mr. Sumner’s office she stum- 
bled, and waded through an entirely new mob, but 
one just as hungry looking. 

“Where do they come from, Mr. Sumner?” she' 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


129 

asked, sitting down beside him in his private office 
again. “ They’re such a pathetic lot ! ” 

“ My dear child, that’s the great, unsolvable mys- 
tery. They come to New York in July, and they 
hang on till February with their sad-looking Four- 
teenth Street suit and their little Woolworth rose 
pinned on a last year’s turban. They trudge up here 
day in and day out as long as there is any hope. 
Where they live, no one knows. How they live, no 
one knows. In March they disappear, nobody knows 
where. Perhaps back to the farm ; perhaps into some 
great lady’s kitchen. Every July, back they flock 
with the same weary look and the same insatiable 
ambition. Sometimes one doesn’t return. Nobody 
ever finds out why.” 

“ It’s a very dreadful business, Mr. Sumner. I 
should think you’d hate it.” 

“ I do in a way because I’ve never succeeded in 
hardening myself. Just now I’m glad my soft feel- 
ings gave you this chance. But don’t bank on it — 
lots of things can happen even to a Broadway star.” 

On the way home Eve sneaked into a pawn shop 
and left her gold watch and chain. It must have 
been a fairly good watch. It brought her ten dollars. 

On First Avenue she invested in a pint of milk, 
a quarter of a pound of butter, some brown bread and 
a dozen of the best eggs. Everything in her was 
pounding with happiness as she climbed the stairs 
with her bundles. 


130 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


It was brilliant noon. Stanley was still asleep in 
bed. As she stood there looking at him, she won- 
dered why she wasn’t furious. She wasn’t. Some- 
thing had happened in her own life. The thing that 
she had come to New York to do was looming up 
big, right in the road ahead. To' be sure it wasn’t 
short story writing, but all the arts were sisters, and 
one could still write short stories when one was a 
decrepit old woman in a wheel chair. 

She stumbled against a table and Stanley turned 
over and gazed at her. “ For the love of Mike, 
where have you been? ” he asked, his fine blond hair 
shadowing the blue of 'his eyes. Eve noticed that he 
was paler and more tired-looking than usual. 

She walked over and sat down on the edge of the 
bed. She didn’t kiss him as she would have done 
before yesterday. Yet it wasn’t because she was 
angry, but because she felt suddenly detached, and 
detachment makes one forget. 

“I’ve had a wonderful morning!” she breathed 
enthusiastically. 

“ Yes! ” he snapped. “ You always have wonder- 
ful mornings! That cruel vitality of yours would 
make you have wonderful mornings if you were fore- 
lady in the cranberry bogs of Jersey! What? 
Where? ” 

Eve stared at him a moment as one stares at a 
strange specimen in a museum. The anger in his 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


131 

voice had nipped the freshness of her adventure. 
She proceeded cautiously. 

“ Well, I decided last night that as story writing 
had failed, I’d do what I said Pd do> — I’d go on the 
stage.” 

Stanley sank back on his pillow and laughed till a 
fork that was on the edge of the stove in the other 
room fell to the floor. “ The stage ! You couldn’t 
get a job if you stood around feeding lollipops to the 
office boy for the next century ! ” 

“ But I ami going on. I’ve got a job already.” 
She produced her typewritten part and laid it on the 
bed beside him. 

Stanley sat up with a jolt. He fingered the blue 
booklet, and then to cover his mistake muttered: 
“ Well, you may get canned, and if you don’t you’ll 
have to rehearse eight weeks without a cent, and 
then the play may last one night.” 

“ Well, Stan, the main thing is getting started. 
They want me to- memorize as much as I can to-day. 
Rehearsals begin to-morrow morning.” 

There was something catching in the way Eve 
went to work on her part. Stanley became inter- 
ested, and by evening he was reading her cues and 
ordering her about as though he were the mighty 
Benrimo himself. 

Something of their old sense of play flooded back 
over them. Stanley got out a box of make-up that 
he had used somewhere back in his college life and 


132 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


proceeded to show Eve the tricks. He made her up 
so exquisitely that when she was finished he couldn’t 
resist kissing her. 

At eight-thirty there was a knock at the door. 
Eve stopped abruptly in the middle of a speech. It 
was an unfamiliar sound, as they were not used to 
visitors. The knock was repeated with an indignant 
pounding at the end. 

Eve opened the door to a little blue-coated boy 
with a snub nose. 

“ Sign here,” he said, thrusting a slip of yellow 
paper and a stubby pencil into her hand. 

Eve signed the slip and the boy gave her a blue 
envelope. 

“ Somethin’ to go back,” he said. 

Eve tore open the envelope and read a note from 
the Jewish frog. 

“ Kindly return part by messenger,” it said, “ as 
your services will not be required.” 

Staring and blinking, Eve sank into a chair. 

“ What is it? ” Stanley asked. 

She gave him the note without a word. He read 
it quietly and at once handed the boy the blue-bound 
typewritten sheets. The boy whistled off down the 
stairs and Stanley closed the door. 

For a moment Eve sat rigid, then collapsed into 
a sobbing heap. 

She looked so little and crushed that straightway 
the god in Stanley sprang to life. He took her in 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


133 


his arms. He whispered great hopeful things. He 
manufactured lovely fairy tales. He kissed her nose 
and her chin and her ears. 

“ Eve, dear, don’t work ! Just be my wife ! You 
wanted only that before we married — want it again ! 
It’ll be a paying investment in time. Dearest, as 
sorry as I am, I’m glad it happened. You’re too 
dominant; too whirl-windy ; too violent. Just you 
taper off a little and try to fit into my slowness, then 
I’ll feel encouraged and go along faster — see? 
That’s the way things work out with married people. 
I’ll take care of you, and you know I will.” 

She couldn’t speak. She crowded up close to him, 
beaten like Marj — poor little Marj on the night of 
the artists’ ball. She saw it all very plainly again. 
Marj, too, had crowded up close to the Shepherd on 
the way home in the taxi. Marj had been crushed. 
Well, there were other women who were crushed. 
What difference did it make whether one was drink- 
shattered or worry-shattered? One was shattered 
just the same. And a shattered woman wants her 
man’s arms as tight about her as she can get them. 

Romancers are at great pains to tell about the 
crucial moment when something snaps. Nothing 
ever really snaps. The soul is simply shifted to 
another plane of living — usually a much lower and 
less interesting plane. 

That is exactly what happened to Eve. The next 
morning she went out and pawned the rest of her 


i34 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


jewelry. She paid the rent for a week to come, and 
settled with the milkman. She went marketing, and 
one hour later climbed the tenement stairs with her 
hands full of the usual assortment of cheap vege- 
tables. Her step was a trifle heavy and her face per- 
haps a shade paler, but that was because she was no 
longer Eve Kerwin, but Mrs. Stanley Bird. She 
had decided upon losing her identity. 


CHAPTER XVI 


Much as one might apply for a job of cooking or 
washing, Eve answered an ad. for a typist at eight 
dollars a week. She knew no shorthand, but, after 
all, that wasn’t necessary for manuscript copying, 
and with two fingers she could fly along amazingly 
fast on the typewriter. 

There were eleven applicants, and Miss Spitz, the 
boss, sat on the other side of a glass door marked 
“ Private,” and interviewed one girl at a time. In 
they went, one by one, and presently out they came, 
either very gay or very cynical. 

When the tenth girl had been dismissed, Miss 
Spitz poked her head out at Eve and said : “ Come 
in!” 

The door slammed. 

“ Any experience ? ” asked Miss Spitz. 

“ Some,” said Eve. 

“ Shorthand?” 

“ Doesn’t matter. What typewriter? ” 

“ Underwood.” 

Miss Spitz, the verbal economist, pressed a button 
and said sternly to the girl who entered : “ Under- 
wood ! ” 


i35 


136 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


“ Take dictation!” said Miss Spitz, holding out 
a sheet of yellow paper to Eve. 

Choking and dizzy with fear of this narrow-eyed, 
stiff-collared business woman, Eve dropped into the 
chair. 

She had never taken dictation before, and it was 
difficult to sit there thumping the slippery little keys 
with Miss Spitz’s eyes burning a hole in her sleeve. 

Miss Spitz jerked the paper out of the machine 
and looked at it for a minute. “All right ! ” she 
said. “ Go in there and pick out a table. You’re 
not very swift, but you’ll earn eight dollars. If you 
learn to write faster I’ll pay you by the word. Don’t 
waste paper, and don’t talk during office hours. Don’t 
get interested in the story. Copy ! That’s all. Do 
it mechanically ! ” 

Eve went into the main workroom, and the fore- 
woman gave her a table, some paper, and a short 
story manuscript to copy. 

The two fingers that she used for the job pounded 
along rapidly, but in her nervousness she kept strik- 
ing L for P and F for R, and so on. Every moment 
she had to stop and rub out. The carbon copy she 
entirely forgot. As a result it was smeared and 
smudged from top to bottom. The forewoman tore 
it and the first sheet into pieces, and threw them into 
the waste-basket. 

“ Start over! ” she said, angrily. “And it might 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


137 

pay you 1x> go a little slower, and use all your fingers. 
You can learn now as well as any time.” 

Humiliated and ashamed, Eve rolled the two fresh 
sheets into the machine. Slowly and laboriously, 
using all her fingers, she completed that first page 
again, and this time without a mistake. That was 
probably the secret of success for her — using all 
her fingers, even all her mental fingers, and using 
them carefully. 

That dreadful first page! She knew every word 
of it. It burned itself into her brain like some long 
ago poem of her childhood. It became one of those 
things that she could never forget. 

When the noon hour arived the girls untied greasy 
little bundles of lunch and sat back chewing. Eve 
was hungry, but she dared not spend any of those 
last few cents in her pocket. Putting on her coat 
and hat with the air o*f dining at Whytes, she wan- 
dered down into Nassau Street. 

Once she had seen cattle squeeze through a great 
windy gulch in the Rockies, and this reminded her 
of it. The narrow street was heaving with frosty- 
breathed people, pushing and elbowing, and stepping 
on each other in a violent hurry to get somewhere. 
They were so fearfully like the cattle in the great 
windy gulch in the Rockies that Eve unconsciously 
cocked her ears to hear them low. 

And then the restaurant windows bewildered her. 
She was achingly hungry. Why was it people got 


138 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


hungry all over again every day? Why hadn’t we 
been created with radishes and onions and beets 
growing on our hands instead of fingers ? It might 
not be so attractive to look at, but it would preclude 
for ever the humiliating necessity for money with 
which to buy food. She was beginning to be furious 
about it when someone clutched her arm and hugged 
up close to her. 

“ Hello, there, you new one ! ” It was the little 
red-headed Jewess who- sat at the table next to hers 
in the office. She grinned up at Eve and asked. 
“ Sunning yourself? ” 

They both laughed, because the sun, even at noon, 
had very little opportunity of showing himself in 
that dim alley-way between the sky-scrapers. 

“ How do you like it as far as you’ve gone ? Pretty 
punk, ain’t it?” said the little girl, nudging Eve 
familiarly. 

“ Well, it isn’t as leisurely as the Waldorf Astoria, 
but I guess it’ll improve.” 

“ No, it won’t improve ! That’s just the trouble. 
It goes on and on just like this. There’s only one 
way for a steno. to improve her job, and that’s to get 
another.” 

“ Is Miss Spitz very hard to get on with ? ” asked 
Eve as they emerged into Franklin Square, where a 
youth was holding forth on Socialism. 

“ Oh, gee ! Is Miss Spitz hard to- get on with ? 
I wonder!” gasped the little red-head. “Why, 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


139 

she’s a regular devil! But she’s got a right! You 
know about her ? ” 

“No, I don’t know a thing on earth about her. 
Just answered an ad. and she took me.” 

“ Well, she came over here from Rumania when 
she was just a kid and worked in sweat shops till she 
brought over the whole damn’ family. ’Course, she 
had to educate her sisters and brothers, so she worked 
herself nearly blind. Ain’t her lamps awful? Now 
they’re all educated — college and everything, and 
she’s taking a short-story course on Saturday morn- 
ings at Columbia. They say she’s going to write 
great stuff about what she went through in the land 
of the free and the home of the brave ! ” 

Just then the street speaker yelled out : “ The land 
of the free and the home of the brave ! ” 

The little red-headed Jewess laughed : “ Gee, listen 
at him snitch my rhetoric ! ” 

On the way back to the office she said : “ You see, 
Miss New One, that’s how it goes. It’s just like 
the street speaker says : you can’t work for no one 
else and get a square deal ! ” 

The afternoon dragged by like a surfeited cobra. 
Eve was hungry. She was cold. Her spine ached, 
and one spot in her shoulder-blade pained sharply. 
Her eyes wandered back again and again to the clock 
on the wall. If it had not been, for the golden pen- 
dulum that swayed eternally below the gilt-trimmed 


140 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


face, Eve would have been willing to swear in court 
that the hands were not moving. 

At five-thirty she put on her things mechanically, 
went down in the elevator, and dragged herself out 
into the street. Then suddenly inside of her some- 
thing new was born. A sudden joy vibrated through 
her. A sudden thrill arose from all that shoving 
and pushing and jamming mass of human beings, of 
whom she now was one. All these scurrying people 
were the machinery that made the wheels go round ! 
Because of her one day in Miss Spitz’s office she, 
too, was now a tiny cog in that machinery. 

She rushed up the elevated steps with the sense 
of something triumphant awakening in her brain. 

After all, writing literature in a garret wasn’t 
living ! The business world was the only live thing 
in existence! The starving scribbler in the garret 
was merely a poorly paid cataloguer of the things 
that the person of business really experienced. Busi- 
ness! No wonder men dropped dead at the ticker! 
No wonder J. P. Morgan was greater than Nero! 
Business! Business! She was thrilled with the 
romance of business ! 


CHAPTER XVII 


Even standing up in the smelly elevated train 
gave Eve a feeling of satisfaction. Back through 
her being surged that sense of oneness with human- 
ity of which the isolated life in the tenements had 
robbed her. 

All the way across Seventy-Seventh Street the his- 
tory of Miss Spitz marched like a glorious pageant 
before her. Miss Spitz had been successful because 
she had done the thing nearest to her hand. That 
was the way women always succeeded. No inspira- 
tion, no talent; just a dull solving of the practical 
mysteries of life. 

Then there was something to be said for working 
down-town, where the chairs were not too' comfor- 
table and the bookshelves farther away than arm’s 
reach. 

That was Stanley’s difficulty. She saw him 
through the hard eyes of Miss Spitz. He was out 
of touch with the hurry. He was a poor boss for 
himself. He ought to be under someone’s whip 
hand. 

“ A little talent — that’s the precious thing ! ” she 
thought to herself. “ Stanley’s talent is too great — 

141 


142 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


he can never get hold of a small enough portion of it 
to make it useful.” 

She plodded along. “ I’m so glad I'm ordinary. 
I’m so glad I’m untalented. I’m so glad I’m just a 
mother-person with a washer- woman’s brain. Now 
I know I’ll do something big! ” 

Then she bought some potatoes and brown bread 
and butter and hurried home. 

The high tenement brought reaction. It was 
agonizing to climb the stairs, and, once inside the 
door, she flung herself down on the cot without 
speaking. 

Stanley came in from the bedroom with a worried 
look in his eyes. “ Where have you been all day, 
little Pussycat ? ” he asked, kissing her cheek a dozen 
times. 

“ I took a job typing,” she answered, without 
opening her eyes. 

He clenched his fists angrily. “ You give it up! ” 

“ I will, honey, when you get started. But until 
then we must live. Will you put the kettle on and 
make me a cup of tea, please? ” 

Stanley was excited. He banged the kettle against 
the enamelled sink and rattled the china cup on its 
saucer. 

“ I’ll get started to-morrow ! ” he said. “ I won’t 
have you working for me ! ” He struck match after 
match and allowed them to blow out while the gas 
escaped. 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


143 


“ Did you work today, dear? ” she asked, reach- 
ing out and taking the fifth lighted match from his 
fingers. 

There was a slight explosion as the flame met the 
escaping gas, and Stanley jumped nervously. 

“ Wish you’d quit nagging me about working! 
I don’t want to be asked all the time! Anyway, I 
slept too late. The scheme’s no good. If I over- 
sleep it upsets me so I can’t go on the way I’ve 
planned. I’d just rather try again without any 
scheme.” 

“ I think that’s a fine idea,” she said, rising to 
rinse out the teapot that he was holding helplessly in 
his hands. He seemed to know there was some- 
thing he was to' do with it, but what that something 
was he couldn’t remember. 

Eve went back to the cot. “ Cut some bread, 
please,” she said, “ and put the butter and milk on 
the table.” 

“ I drank all the milk. I’m sorry ! Shall I run 
out and get some more, dear ? ” 

“ No, thanks 1 , Stan ; tea’s all right without it if 
you don’t look. Water’s boiling, dear; take it off.” 

Stanley burned his fingers on the pot and stood 
there helplessly blowing on them. So Eve dragged 
herself up and poured the water over the tea-leaves. 

This was the climax only of the first day. By the 
end of the week she had learned to sit relaxed instead 
of in a knot ; she had learned not to hear the other 


144 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


machines ; she had learned to work evenly and with 
a certain system. 

All the way home in the train on Saturday she 
crushed that first pay envelope in her hands. It was 
a matter of glorious excitement to her. Eight soiled 
one-dollar bills! At least there’s one nice thing 
about soiled bills — they buy just as much as crisp 
new ones. 

“ Stan, dear, what would you do about those poor 
girls down at Miss Spitz’s? They struggle around 
from eight to five-thirty for eight dollars a week, and 
all of them; have indigestion from the stale lunches 
they cart from home. None of us can afford restau- 
rants, but if we had some way of heating a little milk 
or making a cup of hot tea, we might at least keep 
our insides warm.” 

Stanley, who was always seething with ideas, took 
up the problem eagerly. “ Well,” he said, sitting 
down with paper and pencil, as he always did when 
he was talking seriously, “ seems to me there are 
several ways out. Number one is to ask Miss Spitz 
to put in a gas-burner. Number two is to go to the 
agent of the building and ask for the use of some 
unoccupied office for a lunch room.” 

“ What are you doing, dear? ” asked Eve, leaning 
over to admire the curves of an exquisite figure that 
he was drawing. 

“ Oh, this is a thing I’ve had in my mind for a 
long time — sort of human-fairy woman. See, I’d 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


145 


like to make her the most impossibly beautiful crea- 
ture in the world and still a mother-thing like you, 
but this isn’t quite it ! ” 

He tore the sheet through the middle. 

“ Oh, please, don’t ! ” cried Eve, snatching it away 
before he had destroyed it completely. “ Stan, dear, 
why don’t you sit down and finish something? You 
know, I believe if you’d finish just one big splendid 
thing, you’d be able to keep right on. It’s because 
you never finis'll anything that you lose courage. I’ve 
done four thousand words on the typewriter to-day. 
I’m getting quite expert, and you don’t know what 
a sense of fulfilment came when I handed in those 
sheets. Why, it was hard and wonderful — almost 
like bearing a baby. Won’t you try to finish a pic- 
ture and have it ready to show me to-morrow night 
when I come home ? ” 

“ I’ll finish two, you little lamb-pie ! ” He put 
his arm about her, and they were very happy all 
through the evening. 

She kept from him little things like the paying of 
rent and the pawning of jewelry. What was the 
use ? He couldn’t help, and his mood was so much 
happier when she allowed him to forget. When he 
was happy she could almost see him back at work 
producing bigger things than in those old days, re- 
ferred to by him with so much pride. 

“ You know, Eve, when I used to do comics for 


146 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


the Herald I was as poor as the devil on sixty a week, 
because I was always saving so I could quit.” 

She sat on his lap and nestled her weary head 
under his ear. “And what did you do when you had 
a lot saved? ” 

“ I went to the South Sea Islands and slept on the 
sand till it was all gone. Then I came back and 
went to work again.” 

She could feel his heart beat faster. He took a 
long breath and continued : “I did that stunt four 
different times, but the fourth time something hap- 
pened, and when I got back I couldn’t get to work, 
and it’s been that way ever since.” He pushed her 
gently away from him, and, walking into the other 
room, shut the door against her. 

In a few minutes she crept in and threw herself 
on the bed beside him. “ Don’t worry, dear, it will 
all come right some day. You’ve had a beastly 
hard time with those twitchy nerves of yours, but 
many people go through the same thing. I feel it 
in my bones — good times are near.” 

He reached out and put his arm about her without 
lifting his face from 1 the pillow. Great tears were 
squeezing themselves through his closed lids and 
trickling down on the white slip. 

“ Come back in the other room 1 , Stan, and let’s 
talk about those stenographer girls.” 

She pulled him up, pretending not to see his red 
eyeballs and quivering lips, but she did see them, 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


147 

and the sight of them was the hardest of all the hard 
things she was trying to bear. 

“ Miss Spitz is a dog, and you have to be, to make 
money out of other people’s labor,” he said. 

“ No, I don’t believe that, dear. I can imagine an 
office run on a co-operative plan where everybody 
would make money and be happy.” 

He laughed sarcastically. “ Well, you just try it, 
Miss School of Philanthropy.” 

“ That’s what I intend to do ! I’ve thought it all 
out. I’m going to stick around there till I learn 
every trick of the trade, and then I’m going to start 
a co-operative manuscript copying plant of my own.” 

“ I wish you luck ! But, to begin with, don’t for- 
get that most of those girls are a stupid bum lot.” 
Stanley filled his charred pipe and puffed away with 
his feet on the gas stove. 

“ I know they are, Stan. There isn’t a girl in that 
place now that isn’t looking for another job. They 
all say, 4 Sticking don’t get you nothing,’ but I for 
one am inclined to think they are wrong. They’re 
all so ignorant and hopeless.” 

“ You’d be, too ! ” he snapped, “ if you’d been born 
in a slum and fed on slop all your life ! ” 

“ Why, dear, I’m not blaming them. I’m trying 
to think out some way of helping them.” 

“ You’ll never do it.” 

“ I’ll bet you twelve kisses to one that I will ! ” 

After Stanley went to sleep Eve slipped away 


148 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


down the tenement stairs for a breath of air under 
the stars. It was very late, but the Painter Man was 
striding up and down the river front. This was his 
time for walking, and since the night of their meet- 
ing Eve had gone to him many times for the comfort 
and encouragement that he always gave her. Some- 
times she talked and sometimes she was silent. He 
never asked her questions, but he always answered 
any that she put. Another beautiful thing about 
him was that he never offered advice. The Painter 
Man’s method was to lay before you the facts of life 
and let you make up your own mind about them. 

To-night their shoes thumped on the cobbles as 
they walked back and forth below the playground 
block. 

At last Eve asked : “ What do you think about 
there just being one head to the family, Mr. Painter 
M an ? ” 

“ I think that when it becomes necessary to decide 
upon who is to hold the job there is no longer any 
use for the decision. In monarchies it is usually the 
weakest person who holds the sceptre, but in house- 
holds it is invariably the strongest. It doesn’t do to 
talk about it much, though, because sceptres have a 
horrid way of being pointed.” 

“ Do you think, Mr. Painter Man, that a house- 
hold is ever happy when a woman holds the sceptre ? ” 
“ No.” 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


149 

“ But what if the man isn't strong enough to hold 
? ” 

“ Then that is a very sad household indeed." 


CHAPTER XVIII 


Gradually Eve’s life divided itself into two dis- 
tinct emotions: One was workmanlike and cruelly 
exact ; the other was an easy-going game of make- 
believe. A game that she and Stanley were playing 
together. A pretend game that Stanley was design- 
ing a decorative work of monster size, a work so> fan- 
tastic and stirring that the whole artistic world would 
eventually stand before it in open-mouthed astonish- 
ment. A great pretend game which kept Stanley 
sweet-nature d and contented. A great game to 
which Eve said good-bye every morning before going 
out into the workaday world to develop a man’s-sized 
brain. 

At night there was always happiness and enthusi- 
asm in Stanley’s greeting. He had met a queer old 
woman in the park ; she had allowed him to sketch 
her picture; he had added more notes and the old 
woman’s face to his great book that would be called 
The City; ‘he had eaten his luncheon in a Yorkville 
restaurant and sketched leering monsters through 
smoked breath as they had never been sketched before. 

And then Eve would cook the supper that she had 
carried home in her arms, and they would eat like 
150 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


151 

very gay children. After supper she would press his 
clothes and clean his fractious ties that always dipped 
into things, and wash the dishes, and he would dry 
them and put them away. Then she would tell him 
with a great show of pride how his ideas were work- 
ing out down-town in her office. The hours now 
were from nine to five ; there was a permanent lunch 
room for all the girls in the building; there was an 
envelope for complaints; there was a special light 
just in the right position over each desk. All this 
exchange of conversation made them very happy and 
they loved each other increasingly, and neither ever 
spoke on the subject of the great hurt. 

Spring lasted only a moment and June came with 
roses, and then in a breath December again, and Eve 
remembered with a shock that they had been married 
two years. 

Oh, yes, they were very happy, but Eve knew that 
deep within her there was a twinge of conscience. 
To her it became the Twinge. It had been trying to 
make itself heard for months, but Eve had stopped 
her ears. Now, with her salary raised to fifteen a 
week, her responsibilities greater, and her actual work 
less, the Twinge became insistent. 

All day long in the rush of things she quieted its 
bullying, but in the black stillness of the night it 
perched on the foot of her bed and shook its hideous 
fist in her face. 

The thing that it said the oftenest and the thing 


152 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


that cut the deepest was that she was wilfully ruining 
her husband’s career. 

She grew very indignant at the Twinge one day 
and insisted that she was supporting Stanley so that 
he might develop his great ideas. The Twinge 
laughed in her face and said. “ You are supporting 
him because you love him and want to be near him 
and not because you want to give him a chance. A 
chance is just what you are not giving him ! ” 

At that she challenged the Twinge to open combat 
and lost. 

Perhaps even then she might have proven to the 
Twinge that it was wrong, had it not been for a 
subtle change that was taking place in Stanley him- 
self. There was in him a certain reawakening of 
energy, but it was the wrong kind of energy. It was 
not an energy for work, but for fault-finding and 
backbiting. And it was all directed against her. 
Night after night lie would harangue her for hours, 
until, conquered at last, she would burst into tears. 

The moment she showed signs of breaking he 
would rise to the height of a god, shoulder her sor- 
row, and bear her pain. Nightly the process went 
on: the torture, the tears, and his power to soothe 
them away. 

It was this very fact that gave the Twinge such an 
advantage. Yes, Stanley was powerful. He was 
a genius, but as long as she took care of him he’d 
never find himself. If she insisted on staying with 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


153 


him and yet not taking the man’s place, they’d both 
starve. So there was just one thing to do. She 
had known it for months, but she had never acknowl- 
edged to herself that she did know it. 

March came with hideous winds and cold, the sort 
of cold that sinks into the marrow and freezes it hard. 

One night towards the end of the month Eve came 
home with her mind made up. 

The Nest was sweet and comforting. With a 
tightening in her throat she looked about at all the 
little things they had collected together — precious, 
valueless little things that the outside world would 
never understand. 

She went over to the shelf and picked up one thing 
after another : an ancient Hebrew prayer-book that 
had interested Stanley; an Indian water jar, badly 
broken, but showing still a certain beauty in its pro- 
portions ; an old jewel case with processions of horses 
and chariots all around its bulging sides. 

Eve shut her eyes and hurried into the bedroom. 
That was no way to begin the evening. She had 
set herself a heartbreaking task, and mooning over a 
shelf of lover’s junk was not part of it. 

She took off her street clothes and slipped into a 
blue gingham apron. 

After supper, when the table was cleared and 
Stanley had spread out the magazines, Eve said : 

“ Let’s not read this evening, Stan.” 

Stanley slammed his book down with a bang. 


154 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


Anger was his new method of not showing how 
badly he felt, and Eve understood and he understood 
that she did. 

“ What’s the grouch now ? ” he asked. 

“ I’ve thought of a clever series of comics that you 
could do. I know they would be a go ! ” 

He sneered. “ Since when have you got an idea ? 
You get the big-head quicker than any human being 
I ever met in my life.” 

It surprised her that she didn’t even feel like 
crying. Just pretending not to notice what she 
didn’t want to notice, she went on : “ I thought, 

dear, that while you were waiting for the big ideas 
to crystallize you might do some practical little thing 
so the wtorld wouldn’t forget you.” 

“ The world won’t forget me ! ” he snapped. “ I’ll 
not prostitute my talent! It doesn’t in the least 
matter if you type all day long — you can’t do any- 
thing else! I did comics for four years, and I’ll be 
hanged if I’ll ruin my reputation doing trash any 
more ! ” His eyes popped like fire-crackers. 

“ I don’t think it would hurt your reputation at 
all. The practical things of life are the things to do 
first, then you can work your way to' your dreams.” 
Her tones were soft and quiet, but they didn’t soothe 
Stanley. 

“ You can run your own game, my lady, but you 
can’t run mine ! ” He snatched his hat and started 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


155 

towards die door. His hand was on the knob, then 
he turned and came back into the room. 

“ Eve, dear,” he said, coming over to her and 
taking both her hands in his, “ you’ve been a won- 
derful woman, but it’s no use. I’m beaten, and 
there’s only one way out. Are you big enough ? ” 

She looked at him with fear in her eyes. His face 
was set like a death-mask, yet nowhere in all her 
soul could she find a single word with which to com- 
fort him. 

He pressed her hands till the bones creaked. 
“Are you big enough, Eve, tO' go with me anywhere 
I ask you to. go? ” 

Eve could not part her frozen lips. 

“Are you big enough to close all the windows and 
stuff all the cracks and turn on the gas? ” He jerked 
her up and crushed her painfully against him. 
“ Karl Marx’s two daughters did it when they found 
they were through with living. Are you big 
enough, darling, to go with me?” 

His hands, clutching her, trembled for an answer. 
She drew them down from her shoulders and kissed 
them quietly. 

“ Go out under the stars, dearest, and think it all 
over. There must be some other way.” 

When the sound of his steps had melte'd into the 
silent coldness of the night, Eve, too, went out under 
the stars, but in the opposite direction. 


CHAPTER XIX 


Sleet and rain hissed over the city. It was the 
early evening hour when men come to kiss their 
women. The hour when men come to tell their 
women that there will be no more kisses. The hour 
when women’s hearts are lighted; the hour when 
women’s hearts are broken. 

Eve blew out the candle and crossed for the thou- 
sandth time to the window. She rubbed Spring’s 
breath from the pane and looked out across Washing- 
ton Square. 

Will any of those men compiling the new diction- 
ary be able to tell us what the word lonely means? 
“ Sequestered from company or neighbors; solitary, 
retired ; not frequented by human beings,” etc. ? No ! 
that is not the meaning of lonely! The bitterest 
loneliness comes in the very broil of crowds ! Loneli- 
ness has nothing to do with neighbors ! Loneliness 
is not physical ! Loneliness is a thing of the soul ! 

Eve was not looking at anything in the Square. 
She was trying to pierce beyond — over the trees and 
over the bridges, through the walls of brick and 
stone, over the skyscrapers, over the towers — to 
Seventy-Seventh Street ! 

156 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


157 


It was cold near the window. She shuddered and 
turned around expectant, as though she had heard 
someone coming up the stairs, as though she had 
heard someone calling her! 

The red mouth of the Franklin stove grinned. 
Some coals slipped through the grate and rattled 
down on the ashpan. She looked fearfully about the 
huge attic room — the splintered floor, the cobwebby 
rafters, the eager little stove so red and inadequate. 
The building was deathly still. On all the four floors 
below her the sweatshops slept. 

The Painter Man was right. How she missed his 
quiet masterfulness! Would he have told her that 
cold attic rooms and loneliness of the soul came from 
being too sure about life ? Would he have told her 
that fate was playing one of its practical jokes? 

Work had been no escape. All day long in Miss 
Spitz’s office she banged viciously at the typewriter 
keys to drown the other banging in her brain. Each 
night she crawled to her garret-studio and sank down 
helplessly on the couch. If four short weeks had 
done this to her, how could she hope to fight through 
the endless weeks and years to come? 

She knew she couldn’t fight! “ So,” said her 
bursting heart within her, “why try? You’ll go 
back to him some day — why not now?” 

“ Stanley ! ” she sobbed, and she felt him answer 
all across the city, “ Eve ! ” 

Out into the April night she fled, stumbling and 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


158 

slipping on the muddy pavements. People in the 
street car stared at her. Let them stare ! What did 
she care ! 

A million times her emotions raced back and forth 
while the street car crept along. 

At last she found herself beneath his windows. 
Then she grew fearful. At the farthest point across 
the street she stood and looked up till the back of 
her neck ached with the strain. 

His lamp was lighted — their lamp, their treas- 
ured amber lamp. Its soft glow filled the room and 
floated out into the night. 

“ Stanley, dear, are you thinking of me? ” 

As though he had heard her whisper, he came to 
the window and looked out. She couldn’t see his 
face for the shadows, but his body stood erect and 
determined. Suddenly he turned, and she could see 
him putting on his hat and coat. 

“ He is coming down into the night to search for 
me as I have come down into the night to search for 
him ! ” Eve cried aloud as she fled away. 

Somewhere she got into a Fifth Avenue ’bus and 
spun down the shining asphalt to the Square. It was 
deserted. She crept up the steps at Seventy-One 
South and put her key into the lock. All the black 
eyes of the building mocked at her. She groped in 
the smelly hallway for the stairs. Fear — the mere 
physical fear of darkness tugged at the hem of her 
skirt. 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


159 


It was a hideous thing to live alone at the top of a 
factory building, but this was the best she had been 
able to find after a heartbreaking search. 

She dropped down before the fire and poked aim- 
lessly at the coals, until a sudden strange gaiety took 
possession of her. 

“ I can wait ! ” she laughed. “ He’s working — I 
could tell it by the set of his shoulders. He’s work- 
ing for me ! He’s going to succeed for me ! The 
glorious time is coming! I can wait! ” 

From the Italian quarter came the squeaky tones 
of a tenement phonograph grinding its hard rubber 
heart out in “Apple Blossom' Time in Normandy!” 
She found herself singing to its wheezy accompani- 
ment, singing with happiness. “ Only a little while 
to wait ! How we will love each other for the sacri- 
fice!” 

She undressed and bathed in a little foot-tub be- 
fore the fire, slipped a fresh soft gown over her 
shoulders, and wound \ woolly bath robe about her 
body. 

Ten minutes later the windows were open, and she 
was under the covers with a hot iron toasting her 
feet. 

She smiled sleepily into her pillow. “ Only a little 
while to wait ! Stanley, darling, only a little while 
to wait ! ” 


CHAPTER XX 


Roy Cowdry lived on the rich side of Washington 
Square at Number Three. Eve climbed the stairs to 
his studio with the fear of everything in her heart. 

Her hot brain was scorching with all the changes 
that had taken place in her life during the past two 
months — two months that had stretched out in a 
tortuous length of hurts and sobs and disillusion- 
ments. 

Her legs dragged heavily to the top of the first 
flight. It was breathless and dusty. 

The top of the second flight was dustier and older 
and more stifling. She sat down on a hall bench and 
pressed her fingers into her eyes : “ I must not cry 
any more — - I am nearly blind ! I must not cry any 
more ! ” 

She rose and struggled up the third flight. Per- 
haps the rest wouldn’t be so difficult. Perhaps her 
heart would finally get accustomed to the strain. 
Hearts do get accustomed to almost anything, it 
seems. 

Roy Cowdry was one of those half-serious persons 
who clip coupons for a living and write plays for 
amusement — in his case pretty good plays. 

160 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 161 

Before his open fire stood a little pie-crust table 
laden with hot tea and home-made cookies. The 
sight of so much cosiness sent the truant blood from 
Eve’s brain back into her heart. 

“ It’s awfully decent of you to ask me up here, Mr. 
Cowdry, and I hope you won’t think that I’ve come 
just because I want your work. All I want you to 
give me is a list of literary folk whom* I can canvass 
without using your name.” 

“ Use my name ! ” Cowdry insisted cordially. 
“ You’ve got to use my name ! ” Then he added in a 
whisper : “ You may use it for life if you want to.” 

They both laughed, and Eve promised to consider 
his offer. Then they drank four cups of tea apiece, 
and started out for a long walk. 

“Aren’t you the clever thing to go into business 
for yourself ! I’ll bet on you, Miss Kerwin ! ” 

His confidence in her ability was very heartening, 
but Eve answered modestly: “We won’t be able 
to estimate how clever I am until six months from 
now. You see, I’m not entirely alone. I took the 
best typist Miss Spitz had — little Miss Gumbiner. 
She’s a perfect shark for throwing light on what the 
author means. We’re partners.” 

“ Well, you can have my work, and I’ll hammer 
you out a list of people who are always begging for 
a good typist. . . . Let’s go over there for supper.” 
He pointed across the Square to Fourth Street. 

“ Not now ! ” groaned Eve. “ I’m all full of tea 


1 62 THE GLORIOUS HOPE 

and things. I couldn’t eat even a salad till eight 
o’clock ! ” 

“ Very well, then. We’ll walk up Fifth Avenue 
and come back later. This place is open pretty 
nearly all night.” 

Cowdry had the reputation for being very suc- 
cessful with women. They said it was the way he 
played the mandolin and whispered things to them, 
but Eve found herself no more responsive to his 
charms than if he had been a sack of potatoes drag- 
ging at her elbow. Her body was walking beside 
him, but her soul had flown away to Seventy-Seventh 
Street. . . . 

Why hadn’t Stanley hunted her out? He could 
easily have found her if he had wanted to. It must 
be that pride was keeping him away until he had ac- 
complished something really big. Then ! Then ! 

She was thrilling over the thought of remarriage 
with him, when Cowdry broke in upon her with. 
“ How’s Marj ? I haven’t seen her for a coon’s 
age ! ” 

“ Didn’t you know that Marj is very ill ? She and 
her Shepherd are married and living in a shack in 
the Adirondacks.” 

“ I certainly did not know it, but I’ve been in 
England lately, so why should I? Let’s send her 
some peanuts or crackerjack or something.” 

They went into a Page and Shaw place that was 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 163 

still open and ordered a big box of the kind of candy 
that Marj loved. 

“ How’s your appetite by this time, Miss Kerwin ? 
You know tea just stimulates one for real food.” 

“ I think I’ll be equal to something by the time 
we’ve walked back.” 

Cowdry sat down on a water-plug and stamped his 
feet like a naughty boy. “ I won’t walk back,” he 
cried. “ I’m hungry ! Mean, mean mamma ! ” 

She took his hand and coaxed him along. “ It 
must walk back to Twenty-Third, and then if it 
wants to it can climb up on top of a ’bus and play 
it’s a circus parade.” 

The apparently pacified child clung to her hand, 
and together they jogged all the way back to the 
Fourth Street restaurant. 

There they were met with a slap of smoke and a 
burst of music when the door opened. Men and 
women were dancing and whirling and bumping 
each other in the crowded space of a small bar-room. 

The tables were pushed against the walls, and 
drunken candles were melting sideways in little 
green saucers on the window-sills. 

The dust bit scorchingly into Eve’s nostrils as 
though someone were beating carpets. Windows 
and curtains were down tight to hide the music and 
the smoke and the clinking of glasses away from 
the outside world, because the outside world has a 
way of extracting licenses. There was a weary joy 


164 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


about these people — an ungracious hurry to clutch 
sensations before they slipped away forever. 

The rhythm got into Eve’s brain and made her 
dizzy. She wasn’t sure whether she wanted to' cry 
or laugh as Cowdry took her hand and led her up 
the steep narrow stairway to the dining-room. 

It was an old-fashioned barn of a place, with long 
tables and benches strung against the walls. It was 
packed with people: people limp and people stiff, 
painted people, pale people, drunken people, sober 
people — -weary, bleary people! 

Everybody knew everybody else. Cowdry visited 
each table, introducing Eve en route. In the end 
he chose a place in the far corner of the room and 
motioned her to sit beside him. 

“ Want you to myself now — you can mix up 
with them later on.” He whispered something about 
cocktails to greasy Fritz, the waiter, and greasy 
Fritz hurried off to the back of the restaurant and 
mumbled something down the dumb-waiter shaft. 

Cowdry pushed aside a tipsy array of cream pitch- 
ers, sugar bowls, mustard pots, and unwashed 
glasses. Then he made a broom' out of a paper 
napkin and swept the table clear of crumbs and 
potato chips, so that Eve might have a place to rest 
her elbow's. Together they bent their heads over 
the inky blurred menu. 

“ Chicken ? ” asked Eve. “ Is that good ? ” 

“ Fine, and I’ll make you a Russian dressing for 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


165 

your salad, and the cakes are gorgeriferous, and so 
is the macaroni.” Then, without stopping for 
breath, he demanded: “Why in hell do you wear 
sailor blouses ? ” 

Eve could have knifed him for the question. It 
was as though he had said : “ Why in hell do you 
love Stanley ? ” 

“ Sailor blouses ! ” she stammered. “ Why, don't 
you like them? They’re a great comfort! They — 
they’re the only things on earth that cost a dollar 
and last a lifetime ! ” 

“ Oh, they’re all right in the right place, but a 
woman as good looking as you ought to wear silks 
and satins.” 

Then her championship of Stanley’s ideals asserted 
itself proudly. 

“ Silks and satins ! I haven’t had a thread of silk 
on my back since I learned about the Paterson 
strike ! ” 

“ Well, I’ll be damned if I wouldn’t rather wear 
silk that grown-up people make than cotton picked 
by babies ! ” 

“ Babies ? ” gasped Eve. “ What do you mean — 
babies?” 

“ Why, Miss Kerwin, don’t you read the papers ? ” 

“ No, I hate papers ! ” She laughed a funny quiv- 
ery little laugh of impatience. 

“ Well, I’d suggest that you learn to like them. 
Nothing low-brow about papers. I buy ten or twelve 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


1 66 

a day — get ’em still warm from the press. Lots 
going on in this world of ours, especially in the 
cotton trade.” 

He banged his fists down on the table till the dishes 
rattled. “ There’s nothing rottener than cotton ! 
Compared with it, silk is a regular little golden 
street of paradise. They take creeping babies and 
make ’em pick the stuff. Big sacks tied around their 
necks, eight hours a day! The kids that survive 
naturally never grow to human size, but, thank God, 
most of ’em die ! ” 

Eve’s face turned as white as her blouse. Taking 
it as a tribute to his story-telling, Cowdry added 
further details. 

But Eve was white for quite another reason. Why 
hadn’t Stanley told her about this? It wasn’t pos- 
sible he didn’t know. If he had humbled her for 
wearing silks and satins, he should have murdered 
her for wearing cotton. Something was wrong 
somewhere. Was it Stanley? Could it be? . . . 
The pillars of confidence upon which her very soul 
rested began to crumble. 

“ That’s not all ! ” broke in Cowdry. “ Those that 
survive go' to work in the mills ! ” Then he laughed 
and patted her arm. “ Don’t take it so seriously, 
Miss Kerwin! Everything’s like that all over the 
world, only cotton’s a little rottener than the rest 
because the South’s so damned lazy. Here! Let’s 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 167 

can this obituary service. Ice cream or home-made 
pie? ” 

“ No dessert, please. I can’t eat a bite more.” 

“ Why all this grief ? It doesn’t last long for those 
kids.” 

Eve looked up hopefully. 

“ No,” drawled Cowdry. “ They get threads in 
their lungs and die of T. B. before they’re any age 
at all. Then their mammas and papas produce an- 
other batch.” 

“ Oh, let’s have some fresh air! ” cried Eve, stand- 
ing up suddenly. 

Cowdry caught her by the arm. “ Wait a minute, 
dear lady ! Even if you don’t eat the grub, you have 
to pay.” 

A gentleman with pink beads around his neck 
strolled over and asked: “ What’s the tiff? ” 

“ Oh, nothing personal, I assure you. Just telling 
her about child labor in the South, and it got her 
goat.” 

“ Well, why don’t you tell her something sweet 
now? For instance, take the woollen mills in New 
England.” 

“ You tell her, Don Juan,” said Cowdry. 

Don Juan cleared his throat and began: “ Well, 
once I had a hunting lodge in Massachusetts. In 
the morning, when I’d get up at four and wade 
through the snow and ice to find if my traps had 
mangled anything in the night, I used to see little 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


1 68 

lights come swinging down the hills. The lights 
hung very low to the ground and there were hun- 
dreds of them, like a will-o’-the-wisp carnival. Only 
it wasn’t a carnival at all. It was the children, very 
little ones, going to work in the mills. At night, long, 
after dark, the carnival started again and the little 
lights swung low — this time up and up and up the 
hills, and that meant that the mills were closed and 
the babies were going home to their cradles.” 

Hot needle points pricked Eve’s brain, and in- 
stinctively her hands pulled away from the woolly 
touch of her skirt. 

“ Why doesn’t somebody do something about it? ” 
she asked, so naively, that the man with the pink 
beads went off into spasms of laughter. 

The horrors that Eve was hearing were blows of a 
kind, but they were as light as a humming-bird’s kiss 
compared with the other things that smote her. 
Stanley — his one-sidedness, his emotional and illog- 
ical conclusions — what caused them? Her silk 
dresses — no, she didn’t want them back — but — 
were these people telling her untruths ? If they were 
not, then Stanley was ! But perhaps he didn’t know 
about these things. Yet he was too clever not to 
know. Why, then, did he urge her to wear cotton 
blouses? Was it because he was too lazy to dress 
himself in anything but a flannel shirt that he com- 
manded her to walk about the earth unattractive and 
plain ? No ! That was not it ! It couldn’t be ! Then 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


169 

what was it? What was crumbling? Why did the 
whole earth feel like quicksand under her feet ? Why 
was there no longer a place where she could stand and 
know herself to be safe ? On the flaming red of her 
brain these questions pounded like a blacksmith’s 
hammer. 

Her tottering world; these tawdy creatures about 
her — cigarette-smoking women and soft-collared 
men — she shivered with disgust. The people at the 
next table were watching her through narrowed eye- 
lids, as though she were some new million-legged 
bug with nothing special to offer them but the joy 
of pulling her to pieces. 

It was very little better in the sky-lighted studio 
where Cowdry took her afterwards, but at least there 
were huge squashy cushions there where she could 
hide and relax. It was a large party, and for a while 
she was left quite alone with the drama of her own 
terrifying emotions. 

“ You’re no good as a tragedy queen, Miss Ker- 
win,” said Cowdry, handing her a cocktail. “ Sip 
this, and you’ll be much more attractive. Open your 
moufie and drink, then your troubles’ll trot off tO' the 
back of your brain where they belong.” 

But she didn’t want to drink. She wanted to be 
clear-headed and sharp. She wanted to study this 
room full of couples in intimate poses and search out 
their careless philosophy. Perhaps she was all 
wrong in her sublime seriousness about life. Perhaps 


170 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


they were right to take it as a happy joke. Yet was 
life to them as altogether sweet and worth while as 
it looked, or was their vision blurred ? . . . Was life 
for her as altogether woeful and tragic as it looked, 
or was her vision blurred ? 


CHAPTER XXI 


It was midnight and summer. Eve had just cold- 
creamed her face and settled down with a cup of tea 
before the window when there came three quick pulls 
at the door bell. 

She decided at once not to answer. It rang again 
and again and again until, with a sudden panicky 
fear that it might be some urgent message from 
Stanley — even Stanley himself, she stepped out on 
the fire-escape and called down, “ Who’s ringing? ” 

An entirely unfamiliar voice called back : 44 Is 

Miss Kerwin in? Frightful hurry about getting 
some typing done! I saw a light; that’s why I 
rang.” 

44 Yes, she’s in,” said Eve. 44 Wait a minute.” 
Back in the studio, she pinned her hair up, slipped 
into a blouse and skirt, then flew down the creaky 
stairs to open the front door. 

44 Don’t stumble here at this turning. Be careful ! 
No, please go first so that I shan’t make a shadow. I 
know the way.” 

He was a small man with a pinched, Jewish nose 
and whimsical Irish eyes. 

Up in the studio he began to explain. 44 You see, 
171 


172 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


Mr. Callahan’s taken this play of mine, but he’s ner- 
vous and exacting and I’ve had to do a lot of chang- 
ing — put in bedsteads and kimonos and things so’s 
the public’ll like it.” 

He looked at her questioningly, and she answered : 
“ I see, I see.” 

“ He’s nervous and exacting, as I said before, and 
I’ve got to have all these changes in by to-morrow 
morning — eight o’clock sharp, he said, but he meant 
ten, because he never gets up till eleven.” 

Eve liked the little man. Nothing but his eyes 
were gay, but they were on the verge of laughter all 
the time. 

She smiled back at him. “ So you want me to sit 
up all night and type while you go home and sleep ! 
Is that it ? ” 

“ Nothing so tragic ! ” he declared. “ 111 stay right 
here and fan you or give you aromatic spirits of 
ammonia or cocktails till it’s all done, and then I’ll 
take you out and give you breakfast.” 

“ It’s a go ! ” she said, pulling her table about till 
the drop-light was directly over her head. 

Away she rattled like a machine-gun while the 
little man sat quietly on the floor in front of the 
window, smiling at the world outside. Occasionally 
she glanced at him. He was a dreamer, too. Per- 
haps all great men had to be dreamers. 

No doubt the huge window was his proscenium 
arch, and beyond tripped the actors and actresses of 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


173 


his dreams. Perhaps as her fingers flew his words 
were coming into life before his eyes. He leaned 
over on his elbow and rested his ear in the palm of 
his hand. His hand gave way slowly and his head 
drooped to the rug ; the fringed curtains came down 
over his laughing eyes, and he slept huddled like a 
weary child. 

Eve slowed down gradually so that the silence 
wouldn't awaken him, and, creeping across the room', 
spread a huge woolly shawl over his slender body. 

She stood there for a moment looking down at 
him. He was the Stanley type — sweet, sweet 
droopy children, both of them. For contrast she 
looked up at a plaster cast of the “ Incense Burner ” 
that stood on the beam above the droplight. There 
was the big-muscled man, the sublime male, the 
father of nations ! 

She glanced around her studio. How beautiful it 
was in black and white and splashes of turquoise- 
blue ! Things had changed mightily since her ar- 
rival a few months before. The durable brass affair 
that had taken the place of the weak little card- 
board sign on the door downstairs told the story of 
Kerwin and Company, Expert Typists. 

All day long from the room behind her studio 
came the music of four galloping machines. All 
day long, up-town and down, in subways and ’buses 
and elevateds, Eve canvassed from office to studio, 
from studio to Harlem flat, from Harlem flat to East 


174 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


River tenement — wherever there was the possibility 
of getting a manuscript to type. 

That one evening spent with Cowdry had made 
great changes in her being. She decided that Stan- 
ley was illogical, but she loved him, anyway. She 
wanted him every moment of her life and she was 
going to have him. He had struggled pathetically 
against conditions and it was of no use. Socialism 
and anarchism and all the other isms were not meth- 
ods by which to make one’s living. They were lovely 
Spring dreams that would eventually come to pass, 
but not through his effort or anybody’s effort, but 
just through the slow and natural evolution of 
things. 

She looked down at the filmy blouse she was wear- 
ing and thought : “ Some poor creature probably 

put her eyes out embroidering this. Well, that is 
horrible, of course ; but the blouse is very beautiful, 
and if I refuse to wear it that won’t heal conditions 
in Bulgaria or Rumania or Mesopotamia or wherever 
agile fingers create such things.” 

And, judging by the eager work that Stanley was 
doing in the newspaper world, great changes were 
also taking place out on Seventy-Seventh Street. 
Evidently Stanley, too, had about arrived at the same 
conclusions. She pulled down the scrap-book where 
all his precious cartoons were pasted. The American 
was running a daily strip : “ Modern Hans Ander- 
sen,” and the little sparrow in the right-hand lower 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


175 


corner of the last picture was Stanley’s signature. 
His work was exquisite, almost too exquisite for 
newspaper reproduction. Eve ran her finger along 
the lovely lines, studying every turn. Yes, his won- 
derful imagination that had been blocked so long was 
flowing again, and flowering again — flowering mir- 
aculously. 

And the strip was really very funny, too. There 
was always a business bore with unalterable schemes 
— schemes that could not fail, million-dollar Charlie 
Chaplin salaries, and such. Then, poof! The pie- 
faced boob always walked away with the spoils. It 
wasn’t the humor that riveted Eve to the page, but 
the satire. There it was, a supposedly silly little 
strip, yet terrific, mysterious, and searching. Some- 
thing that cut through all the outer reserves and at- 
tacked the vital energies of life. It was the same 
old philosophy that life cannot be planned, that made 
the thing so poignant. Of course, this would ap- 
parently escape the man in the street, but actually it 
would be the very thing that would hold him. 

Eve sat down at her typewriter again and gave 
herself over to a sort of future-fancying. 

She had not seen Stanley since that stormy night 
when she stood below his windows. But, in spite of 
a life that was crowded and difficult, she thought of 
him always. Those daily cartoons were her one 
comfort, for they were the earnest of her reward 


176 THE GLORIOUS HOPE 

for giving him the chance to fight out his salvation 
alone. 

She leaned over and pressed her forehead against 
the cold iron of the typewriter. Just at this lonely 
hour she wanted him most. She wanted his kisses. 
She wanted more and more the little language in her 
ear. She wanted their playtimes together and their 
long walks through the crowded East Side streets. 
She wanted him big and glorified as she had planned 
him. 

Why had she failed? Why couldn’t two human 
beings who adored each other work out their destiny 
together instead of apart? Why was fate always 
delighting in unnecessary human tragedies ? 

She sat up suddenly and began to work again. 
She pounded away as though she were determined to 
beat something into life. She hunched her shoulders 
over the keyboard, she glued her eyes to the manu- 
script. She feared to- look up lest she might have to 
acknowledge a thought, a conviction, a determination 
which had that moment seized her. 

But even with head bent low she had finally to 
acknowledge it, anyway. 

She would go back to Stanley to-morrow ! When 
the sun was up ! When the air was heavy with loving 
and mating ! When Summer was running along all 
the highways of the world throwing leaves and buds 
out of his magician’s cap! To-morrow! It was al- 
ready to-morrow ! 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


1 77 


Closer she leaned, to pound out the last page of the 
stranger’s play ; then she stood up and, stretching her 
arms high above her head, murmured : “ What a 
backache ! What yawns ! ” 

Tip-toeing over to the window she knelt down 
with her arms resting on the sill. It was what some 
great man had called “ the grey chiffon hour, when 
the pale moon bows low in maidenly fashion and the 
sun, leonine and fierce, strides across the earth melt- 
ing the mysteries with his yellow breath.” 

The yellow breath melted the mysteries for Eve. 
She sighed wearily and smiled. Well, the future- 
fancying had been worth while. She might not have 
been able to last through the night had it not been for 
the glory of the coming day. 

Now it was all over. To-morrow was here. 
Summer was here. Birds were chittering in the 
Square and the daylight asked : “ Go back to Stan- 
ley?” and she answered: “Of course I shall do 
nothing of the sort ! ” 

The man on the rug sat up suddenly, rubbing his 
eyes like a little child. 

“ Oh, dear me, I must have dozed ! How can you 
ever forgive me — I ” 

Eve stopped him with a big, healthy laugh. “ Yes, 
I’m very much afraid that you dozed. You silly 
man, why should both of us have stayed awake be- 
cause I had to work ? ” 

He looked at the woolly shawl. “And you cov- 


i 7 8 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


ered me up, too ! You’re the mother-kind all right. 
You’d better be careful, because that sort never mar- 
ries satisfactorily.” 

“ I’m not the mother-kind at all ! ” said Eve. 

“ I’m just a hard-hearted business woman, and you’ll 
think so, too, when you get my bill for staying up 
all night ! ” 

“ It’s worth a million dollars ! ” he said, jumping 
to his feet. “And now about that breakfast. Sup- 
pose I go out and buy some nice things and we cook 
them 1 here ? ” 

“ No, thanks ! ” said Eve. “ I’ve passed the stage 
of wanting to feed men. I want them to feed me! 
So, you see, I’m not a mother-woman after all ! ” 

“ I don’t blame you, Miss Kerwin. Blank foolish- 
ness to do that kind of work when you don’t have 
to.” 

“ It isn’t that, Mr. What’s-your-name ; but feeding 
a man reminds me of something I’d rather forget.” 

For a moment his Irish eyes clouded as though 
there were memories behind them, too; then he 
reached for the manuscript that she was holding in 
her hands. 

“No, no!” she said, holding tight to the type- 
written sheets. “ I’ve got to correct these. That’s 
the way I’ve made my hit. Nothing but perfect copy 
goes out of this place. I say, can’t you waste an 
hour somewhere while I skim through this and make 
myself morningfied? Then we’ll go way up to the 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


179 


Waldorf and have a ‘ Regular Breakfast ’ for fifty 
cents if you’re poor, and an irregular one if you’re 
rich. And by the way, before you go, would you 
mind telling me what your name is? Just a little 
formality.” 

“ Margate ! ” He laughed and trotted off down 
the steps and out into the awakened Square. 


CHAPTER XXII 


Some days after Margate got his manuscript back 
from Eve the Fate Sisters were putting in an eight- 
hour day at carding and weaving and spinning when 
they struck a knot in the shape of a very oily person 
who climbed the stairs to the offices of Kerwin and 
Company, presented a play to' be copied, and asked to 
have the work completed within a week. 

Eve glanced over the pages to make sure that she 
understood them. Suddenly she came upon a scene 
that caused her to exclaim a little startled “ Oh ! ” 
She skimmed along further and found another sur- 
prising scene. She said nothing, but quietly made 
out the following questions on a slip of paper and 
handed them to her prospective client. 

Have you had this copied before ? 

Has anyone collaborated with you? 

Have you discussed your plot with anyone? 

The man wrote “ No ” after every question and 
signed his name. 

After she left Eve read through the manuscript 
carefully. She felt more and more puzzled, and she 
wondered if she had better consult Margate. Not 
yet, she decided, as there could be no real danger. 

180 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 181 

But she treasured the little paper her new client had 
signed, and for safe-keeping pinned it with her 
money inside her blouse. 

The acquaintance with Margate continued. Their 
breakfast at the Waldorf was followed by tea at the 
Ritz. After that there were several dinners. Then 
he suggested that, for the fun and experience of the 
thing, Eve should take the part of the maid in the 
first and last acts of his play and go on as one of the 
mob in all the acts between. 

“ It would be fun and it would be experience,” 
Eve said, and accepted his offer. 

And this leads through the sweltering summer to 
the Indian red of October and a dress rehearsal of 
the play. Three hundred principals and supers shiv- 
ered in the wings while Callahan, the great producer, 
stormed and raged about the place like a caged hyena. 

The eight weeks of rehearsal disillusioned Eve 
concerning the stage. She had expected to find 
actors fascinating, and they weren’t even interesting. 
Press agent stories announced that many fine ladies 
from the vicinity of Fifth Avenue had joined the 
company for stage experience. As a matter of truth, 
they were mostly bedraggled females from Harlem 
and the Bronx who existed year in year out on the 
eight dollars a week that a super is paid — profes- 
sional “ Extra Ladies,” dressed in the cast-off 
clothes and shoes six or seven years removed from 
Callahan’s stars. 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


182 

A seasoned theatre-goer might even have said: 
“Oh, see that orchid dress on the right? Well, 
Etheline Silverthread wore that in ‘ Conquering 
Caroline!’ ” or “See that cardinal robe? Didn’t 
Rosalie Heatherbloom wear that in ‘ Beautiful 
Bachelor Buttons ’ at The Empire the year I came 
out?” 

Poor “ Extra Ladies ” — so many of them had 
babies! Quiet, sickly little creatures they were, 
that slept through the performances in suitcases 
under the dressing-tables. 

Isn’t it marvelous that so much frazzled humanity 
can mass up rose-colored from the other side of the 
footlights ? 

“ It’s limberger ! ” shouted Callahan, striding up 
and down the middle aisle of the great theatre, gulp- 
ing cocktails from a water pitcher. “ It’s limberger ! 
To the garbage can! To the garbage can, I tell 
you ! ” And draining the last drop of alcoholic con- 
solation he smashed the pitcher on the floor and sank 
into the nearest red velvet seat, covering his face 
with his hands. 

Callahan had his own way of producing a play. 
He hired the strongest truck horse he knew to drag 
the circus into* shape, then he appeared at the first 
dress rehearsal and ground it to sausage meat. 

But he simply couldn’t do it without weeping He 
was weeping now. Fat tears dripped through the 
eight cracks between his ten fingers. 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


183 

Margate, the author, who should by all precedent 
have been seated in the far dimness of the back row, 
buzzed about like a debutante at her coming-out 
party. He couldn’t help it. It was his first play. He 
whispered and explained, and exhorted, and shook 
the script in people’s faces till Callahan shouted for 
him to dry up. 

He did dry up, like a wet towel over a hot radiator, 
and like the wet towel he dried stiff. He stalked 
over the little run-way that sprouted from the middle 
aisle to the stage, and sat himself down like a wooden 
Indian in a seat conspicuous, but far removed from 
Callahan. 

Callahan rose to his feet. Tears were streaming 
down his face. 

“ I’m ruined ! ” he shouted. “ That’s what I am 
— I’m ruined ! The play’s a damned failure. Every 
cent I’ve got on earth is tied up in it ! I’m ruined ! 
I tell you I’m ruined ! ” He staggered into a box 
and stepped over the brass railing to the side of the 
stage, and Margate, entirely forgetful of his injured 
dignity, jumped up and followed him. 

“ That’s how Drury Lane puts it all over us ! ” 
wailed Callahan, pointing to the boathouse with 
vivid green vines painted on its wall. “ Wouldn’t 
have a lousy painted vine crawlin’ over a canvas 
dock ! They’d have the real shrubbery cottoning to 
wood ! Savey ! I ain’t mad at you ! You done 
swell, but why didn’t you pad it out ? Don’t save 


184 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


me money ! I’ll buy you a lumber yard ! Ain't I 
just had the 4 Mermaidens ’ fail on me, and ain't I 
got three hundred dollars’ worth of seaweed and 
honeysuckle souring in the warehouse? Use 'em! 
Use ’em ! Smear ’em all over the place ! Don't let 
Drury Lane knock the stuffins out of you! Work 
like hell and don’t look lousy ! ” 

Then he pulled out a stogie and lit it, and those 
who were acquainted with the great producer knew 
that he didn’t consider himself ruined at all, but had 
just progressed to 1 the point where he was preparing 
to roll up his sleeves and get to work. 

44 The Other Side ” was the biggest melodrama 
that he had ever attempted. In fact, it was about 
the biggest thing anybody had ever put on outside a 
circus tent. There were three hundred people in it 
and twenty-five horses, two tallyhoes, four automo- 
biles, and an aeroplane. 

Callahan chewed and puffed at his stogie as though 
it were the only tangible thing on earth. 

44 Strike ! ” he yelled, 44 and travel right through 
again so I can rip the guts out of it on the way! ” 
Fifty-five stage hands whisked the adventurers’ 
den off and slid the countryside into place. 

The trumpeter blew his horn and a tallyho, drawn 
by six excited horses, pounded down the stage drag- 
ging with it the huge tree that decorated the middle 
of the lawn. The ingenue fainted, everybody 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 185 

screamed, the horses reared up on their hind legs 
ready to dash across the footlights. 

Fifty-five stage hands swarmed around the coach 
like ants around a cracker crumb. The horses were 
unhitched and led off disgraced. The ingenue was 
stretched out on the stage and given a dose of aro- 
matic spirits of ammonia. 

Callahan was blazing. “ Gee ! that’s a swell 
entrance ! Do that the opening night and I’ll shoot 
your damned head off ! ” He spat his words at the 
driver. 

The driver crawled down off the box, walked to 
the stage entrance, and then whisking about on his 
heel, called back: “Get somebody else to do your 
dirty work ! I’m through ! ” 

“ Proceed with the drowning! ” shouted Callahan. 

The hero appeared, carrying in his arms the super, 
who was to' get a nightly wetting in place of the 
heroine. 

Callahan threw his hat and coat on the stage and 
roared with laughter, only it wasn’t the kind of 
laughter that improves one’s digestion. 

“ Do you call that wet ? My God, look at her 
hair — dry as the Sahara! Wet ’er! I say, wet 
’er!” 

The super jumped out of the brave hero’s arms, 
and faced Callahan. “ If I ain’t wet enough, then 
you get somebody else that’ll get wetter! I ain’t 
pleadin’ for pneumonia at eight dollars a week ! ” 


1 86 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


“Out you go!” bawled Callahan. He turned 
toward the empty theatre and called: “ Miss Trixy, 
here’s your chance ! ” 

A small blonde girl hurried up out of the dark and 
scrambled to the stage. 

Callahan looked her in the eye. “ Drown your- 
self ! W-e-t, wet,” he spelled out. “No sprinkling ! 
Drown yourself! Buy a rubber union suit and 
charge it to me, but drown w-e-t! Are you 
willing? ” 

“ Yes, sir,” she answered, white and scared as 
Callahan pushed her into the hero’s arms. 

In the scene before the saloon, where the villainess 
stabs the tramp who knows her secret, Callahan went 
mad. 

“ My God, what is this ? A suffrage parade ? 
What are all these females for? They don’t ad- 
vance the plot! Can ’em! I say, can ’em! Can 
that beggar at the comer! Can the whole damn’ 
scene and jump to the murder! ” 

When the fort was bombarded, Callahan pulled 
out the three remaining hairs on top of his head. 

“ Noise ! Nothing but noise ! The whole damned 
scene is on the fritz ! Cut it ! ” 

The truck-horse stage director rushed over and 
whispered : “ Mr. Callahan, that scenery cost five 

thousand dollars ! ” 

“ What the hell do I care if it cost five hundred 
thousand dollars ! To the ash heap ! Who the hell 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


187 


planned that scene ? That’s what I want to know ! 
Let a boy die for forty-five minutes singing ‘ My 
Bonnie lies over the ocean ! ’ Ha ! Ha ! Ha ! 
Save the agony and choke him' now ! Bring on the 
Cafe stuff!” 

Stone walls and vine-clad trellises were rushed on, 
and in three minutes there were ladies and gentlemen 
chatting and smoking at all the tables except one. 
That was reserved for the entrance of the villainess. 

And the villainess ! How Callahan yelped at her ! 

“ God, you don’t know how to look ruined ! 
Here ! ” He pushed her out of the way and acted 
her part. His voice, his head, the droop of his 
shoulders, were things that a Bernhardt might have 
envied. When at last he wept unreservedly on the 
villain’s shoulder, out of the wings came bravos and 
thundering applause from three hundred excited 
supers. 

It was midnight when Callahan finally sank down 
on the boathouse steps and muttered : “ Now it’s a 
play, by God! Now it’s a play! ” 

Hot coffee was passed around to resuscitate the 
exhausted actors, and Callahan drank his out of the 
bucket. With great effort he rose stiffly and walked 
to the middle of the stage. “ You’ve been fine! 
Every damned one of you ! ” He waved his hand 
in a semicircle to include every actor and actress, 
every stage hand, every “ extra person ” in the cast. 
“ I don’t know how I’ll ever thank you enough. If 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


1 88 

the play’s a success, we’ll all be rich. If it’s a fail- 
ure, no person here shall ever come to want as long 
as I can beg, borrow, or steal the money to help him 
out! Now we’re going through again straight to 
the end ! ” 

Eve was so upset when she came on as the maid 
that Callahan barked at her like a. dog. “ You ! 
Have you got anything to say ? Tell it to the audi- 
ence, don’t murmur into the theatrical scrim ! ” 

Callahan didn’t understand her fear. Eve wasn’t 
afraid of him, but of a certain oily face that she had 
seen creeping about in the back of the theatre for the 
past three hours. 

Nobody seemed to* notice it until it walked down 
the middle aisle and up the run-way over the orches- 
tra to' the centre of the stage. Of course, the face 
had a body hitched to it, but the body didn’t count 
at all. It was the snarling, white face that was 
startling. 

Callahan was as superstitious as the devil himself, 
and those who happened to be facing him at the time 
said afterwards that for a moment he looked fright- 
ened. 

“ This play’s not going on ! ” announced the oily 
face. 

Callahan strode up and poked his square chin 
almost into the intruder’s jaw. “ The hell it isn’t ! ” 
he muttered, clenching and unclenching his right fist. 

“ Well, if I say it’s not, then it’s not ! ” Oily 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 189 

Face’s lips hung so loose that he was positively 
hideous. 

Callahan grinned. “ That’s great melodrama, but 
bad real life. What’s the grouch ? ” 

“ Margate stole my play ! ” 

“ Stale stuff,” said Callahan. “ What’s the O. 
Henry twist ? ” 

“ I’ll give the O. Henry twist, all right,” snarled 
Oily Face, diving down into his pocket and fishing 
out a stiff folded paper. “ Here’s an injunction. 
Eat it and I hope you’ll get indigestion. Your play’s 
not going on ! ” He fairly threw the paper at Cal- 
lahan, and started toward the back of the stage. 

Eve’s knees knocked so loud that she heard them. 
At last she was a real heroine. She would save the 
play, and Callahan would give her a big part out of 
gratitude. She saw her name in electric lights on 
Broadway, blinding the eyes of all passers-by — par- 
ticularly the home town folks who said she’d never 
do anything. 

Meanwhile, as she struggled to find her voice, there 
was a scuffle in the middle of the stage, where Cal- 
lahan was squeezing daylights out of Oily Face. 

And then, just like a real heroine, Eve awoke from 
her stupor and commanded : “ Stop! ” If she had 
died that moment, her glorious ghost might always 
look back and say that life had been worth while. 

Callahan let go, and Oily Face yelled : “ She’s the 
thief ! Now I understand ! She’s the thief ! ” He 


190 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


gasped for breath. “ She’s in the business to> steal ! 
Thief! Thief!” 

It was all so marvelous, getting a big scene like 
this. Eve longed to hold on to it for ever, but Cal- 
lahan snapped her ecstasy in the middle by demand- 
ing. “ Who are you? ” 

“ I’m a typist. I typewrote Mr. Margate’s play. 
Some time later this man brought me a manuscript. 
My books can show both dates. I saw at once he 
had stolen some of Mr. Margate’s play, so to' be on 
the safe side I had him sign a little paper. I have 
the paper here.” 

She reached into her blouse and brought out the 
tiny document that she had worn for months. 

Oily Face grabbed at it, but Margate, standing 
behind Eve, was too swift for him. 

Oily Face nearly burst a blood vessel. 

“ I — — ” Eve tried to continue, but Callahan 
interrupted her, not with a big part in the play, but 
with a command to get back in the wings, where she 
belonged. Then he turned to Oily Face. 

“ Now, look here, young man, I’ve got people to 
prove that I’ve had Margate’s play for three months. 
There may be some similarity, but that’s not our 
fault.” He bowed low before his victim. “ Great 
minds often run in the same channel — isn’t that the 
old witticism? Now you’d better go and whisper 
something to the judge about this injunction. And, 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


191 


by the way, when you have another play finished, 
drop around and give me first chance to read it ! ” 
As Oily Face disappeared through the stage en- 
trance, Callahan turned to Margate and asked: 
“ Who in the devil is that madman? ” 

“A son of my landlady, I think. She has a son 
who’s supposed to be a crook. He probably found 
an early draft of the play in my room and thought 
he could turn an honest penny.” 


CHAPTER XXIII 


All day, as Eve Kerwin had canvassed from office 
to office, she had had the feeling that something was 
awaiting her — something big, something mighty. 
Something big and mighty could mean only one thing 
to her strained emotions — Stanley ! To be sure, 
she had told herself time and again that he would 
never write to her, but she had said it hoping to 
enrage Fate into proving her wrong. 

Arrived at home, she groped about in all the dark 
corners near the door where letters and cards might 
hide themselves. Anyone watching her would think 
she had lost something precious and was hunting for 
it. She had lost something, and she was hunting 
for it. And it wasn’t there. 

She dragged herself wearily upstairs, jerked off 
her hat and coat, and, throwing herself across the 
couch, wept dark shadows under her eyes. 

Night came down over the Square and crept 
stealthily into the studio. Still she lay there until 
aroused by the sound of a timid step on her stairs 
and a timid knock on her door. She jumped up, 
patted her hair to rights, and lighted candles. 

Her visitor proved to be a young Jew of the 
192 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


193 

dreamy, intellectual type. He introduced himself 
shyly. 

“ My name is Jake Rosenheim, and I’ve written 
a book.” 

“And you want me to type it. Is that it ? ” 

“ No. I want you to publish it.” 

He was very young and very gentle, and Eve 
found herself smiling kindly at him. 

“ But I’m not a publisher, my dear boy. I’m only 
a plain garden-variety typist.” 

He looked so troubled at this, and so inarticulate, 
that just to humor him Eve took the sheets from his 
hands and sat down beside the green lamp to read. 

She turned the pages quickly. She read in blocks. 
At midnight she was still sitting in her chair, still 
turning the pages, still reading in blocks. 

He sat watching her, his blue eyes sparkling ; his 
body perched expectantly on the edge of his chair. 

Finally Eve gathered the sheets together and 
looked at him. 

“ You have written a great play,” she said. 

“ It isn’t a play, is it? I thought I had written 
a novel.” 

“ It is the greatest play of its kind that I have ever 
read. Tragedy it is, poignant Jewish tragedy, in 
which you have wrecked the bravest Jewish ideals.” 

“Yes, I suppose so<, and why I did it was this: 
We Jews are just as weak as other people, only when 
Jews try to prove it, other people won’t listen, so I 


194 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


thought it would be a good idea if I had anything to 
say to write it.” 

Eve smiled at his boyishness, “ You’ve had some- 
thing to say and you’ve known how to put it in writ- 
ing. I’m thrilled over your book, and I know enough 
from miy six weeks’ experience in Margate’s ‘The 
Other Side ’ to say that this is something new under 
the sun. Now listen to me : what do you say to my 
producing it ? ” 

“ But, Miss Kerwin, do you know enough to pro- 
duce a play ? ” 

“ No ! But Belasco and I know people who do 
know enough, and we’re not afraid to employ them 
and take the glory for ourselves.” 

It would be too late to ’phone most people, but Eve 
knew she could still get Margate. 

He came at once in answer to her call. His quick 
laugh and whimsical manner seemed to frighten 
Rosenheim, who crawled deeper and deeper into 1 his 
shell, and at last slipped quietly out and away. The 
others were too absorbed in his manuscript to notice 
when he went. 


CHAPTER XXIV 


“ But suppose we do make a great play out of it, 
said Margate, nervously skimming page after page. 
“ It’s Spring and nobody’ll put it on for you now.” 

“ But I mean to put it on myself ! 0th, I’m so 
thrilled ! Don’t you understand ? It’s bound to run 
for months ! You’ll be rich, I’ll be rich, little Rosen- 
heim will be rich ! Success, my dear man ! That is 
the sort of thing that makes people really happy! 
Big business ! The romance of big ideas! Oh, Mr. 
Margate, you must help me ! This is my chance ! ” 
She leaned forward and began to pound out her 
ideas on her knee. “ I’ll rent a theatre for one week 
— a theatre that is closed for the season. I can get 
it for five hundred dollars. I’ll engage every Broad- 
way star that is out of a job. They’ll come for 
nothing and take a chance on making money when 
the thing goes. Mr. Margate, if I make good, I’ll 
have you to thank for everything. It was Callahan’s 
handling of your play that gave me the idea. Oh, 
I know now that nothing matters in this world but 
the bigness of one’s job — that’s romance enough! 
It’s all I want!” She walked excitedly up and 
down the length of the room. 

i95 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


196 

As she passed him, Margate caught her wrist. 
“ This is not all you want, Evelyn.” He drew her 
into his arms and kissed her. 

It is so sweet to be loved ! So sweet to be wanted 
by somebody, that it doesn’t always matter who the 
somebody is. 

“ Evelyn, dear, you want love and home and all 
that sort of thing — you know it. A mother-woman 
like you can’t go on for ever slaving as you slave. 
At least she can’t without love. Evelyn, will you 
marry me ? ” 

It was so comforting in his arms that Eve wished 
with all her heart that Gabriel would blow his horn 
and end everything then and there, sweetly and 
quietly. 

Along with the peace and the comfort came a burn- 
ing resentment against Stanley. How dare he treat 
her so indifferently ? How dare he gulp his success 
alone when it was really her sacrifice that had made 
him reach out for life again ? 

And then there rushed over her a flood of love for 
him. If he was waiting, it was only so that he 
might bring not petty success to lay at her feet, but 
the whole world of art marching in adulation behind 
his chariot. 

All the comfort went out of Margate’s arms. She 
drew away from him. 

“ I’m married, you know, Mr. Margate.” 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


197 

“ Married ? ” His voice was full of reproach and 
anger. 

“ Yes. I really thought you knew. Stanley 
Bird.” 

“ So you’re the one ! I’ve heard vague tales about 
Stanley’s wife leaving him, but nobody ever sees 
Stanley and nobody knows facts. You knew I cared 
for you. Why didn’t you stop me before ? ” Then 
he put his arms about her again. “ We’ll get a 
divorce. I only wish everything were as easy as 
that ! ” 

“ But I love him.” 

Margate glared. “ Then why aren’t you with 
him?” 

Tears rushed to Eve’s eyes. “ Oh, Mr. Margate, 
I can’t talk to you about it. Let’s go back to our old 
friendship — the way it was before to-night. I need 
you so much ! Please let’s go back ! ” 

Margate gathered up Jake Rosenheim’s manu- 
script and went out hurriedly, banging the door 
behind him. 


CHAPTER XXV 


Every seat was taken. All “ First Nighters ” 
who happened to be in New York on June thirtieth 
were there. Hey wood Broun, Alec Woollcott, Alan 
Dale, and Louie Sherwin had all come for a great 
laugh. There had been innumerable stories in all 
the newspapers about Kerwin & Co., and Eve’s pic- 
ture smiled out at the world from a dozen first pages. 
Everybody knew that Jack Ritz had never written 
anything before and that his name was really Jake 
Rosenheim. 

Margate had agreed to one-third of the profits and 
none of the glory. “ The Fall of Sebastian ” was 
the first play of an unknown author put on by an 
unknown producer. That made a good newspaper 
story and gave them for nothing advertising that 
they could never have purchased for ten thousand 
dollars. 

It is no secret that Ibsen took two years tO' write 
a play, but it is a great secret that most of the plays 
on Broadway are written in two days and put on 
after a rehearsal of two weeks. 

That doesn’t mean that Broadway hasn’t difficul- 
ties. The difficulties are greater by reason of the 
198 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


199 


short time there is in which to solve them. During 
the month that it took to write and stage Rosenheim’s 
play neither he nor Margate nor Eve slept unless it 
was during a stolen moment in street cars, ’buses, or 
taxis. Rosenheim moved down to Margate’s studio, 
and together they shaped and tore apart and shaped 
again, ten thousand times, the words and the action 
of the play. 

Poor, quiet Jake, who had never known excitement 
in his life, grew thin and pale. 

Like all great undertakings, there was no half 
course possible. Eve’s nine hundred dollars that she 
had put by so painstakingly melted in one morning 
down on the East Side, where she went from shop to 
shop and from' home to home buying props that had 
really come from Russia. 

Margate’s belief in the play was so great that he 
backed the proposition with his signature. 

From the other side of the footlights everything 
seems so easy that it would do no good at all to 
describe the terrors that rage behind the asbestos 
curtain. 

Even the best director obtainable in New York at 
the time did not entirely please Eve, and the conse- 
quence was that, after a short but pointed discussion, 
there was no director at all. 

It was no uncommon thing for Margate to burst 
in and say: “Sadie, you take that speech of Sebas- 
tian’s about religion and, Sebastian, you take your 


200 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


father’s speech about money and, Father, you disap- 
pear from this scene entirely.” 

Actors have a genius for these changes. They all 
know each other’s lines, and playing baseball with a 
scene or two doesn’t in any way upset the actor’s 
equilibrium — that is, unless he gets superstitious 
and resigns. Sebastian did this very thing, and it 
took all Eve’s powers of persuasion and even her 
tears to bring him back into the cast. 

The leading lady became ill two days before the 
opening, and her understudy had to be pommelled 
into shape. 

The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Chil- 
dren got out an injunction to prevent the cripples 
from appearing in the play, and the United Jewish 
Charities kicked up the dust for what they under- 
stood to be an untruthful representation of conditions 
on the East Side. 

In describing “ The Fall of Sebastian ” one might 
say that it was the result of the Garden of Eden, 
crushed into four acts. Gertrude Shelby, a Broad- 
way star, played Sebastian’s sister, by far the most 
important role. C'hatfield, an unknown “ comer,” 
offered his services as the lover. The broken old 
father, whose neurosis compels him to drive tacks all 
day and most of the night, was done by a German 
from the Deutches Theatre. The Jewish step- 
mother, slightly overdrawn, forces the sister on the 
street to earn the money that she buries in a hole in 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


201 


the wall. Of course, the first man that the street- 
walker accosts turns out to be the man she loves. 

How she isn’t reformed, how Sebastian fails in his 
gigantic efforts not only to save his own family but 
to change our political system, are some of the intri- 
cacies that wind' themselves in and out, back and 
forth through innumerable horrors, to the end of the 
fourth act. 

Eve and Margate and Rosenheim sat like three 
wooden Indians far back in a second-story box. They 
were dazed with exhaustion. Their ears refused 
to hear. Their eyes refused to see. Their bodies 
refused to feel. 

Young girls in Russian peasant costume twined in 
and out among the seats with trays of frozen fruit 
juice. It was a stifling hot night. 

The curtain went up on a dubious and snickering 
audience that was suddenly shocked into silence by 
the absolute faithfulness portrayed in the tenement 
hallway. The stage was empty. The co-authors 
gave grudgingly to that audience because they knew 
their effects must be cumulative. There was a unan- 
imous catch of breath as some chicken feathers 
twirled and blew and a grey alley cat came out from 
behind a garbage can, stretched himself, and disap- 
peared through the window to a roof behind. 

At the end of the first act there was a suppressed 
titter. At the end of the third, when the old father 
kills his second wife for wrecking the lives of his 


202 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


first wife’s children, the most sophisticated ladies in 
the audience were weeping, and when the curtain 
dropped on the fourth there wasn’t a rich man in the 
house that would not at that moment have given 
every cent of his fortune to make the world a more 
beautiful place in which to play. 

In an instant the whole audience was shouting and 
screaming: “Author! Author !” thundering its ap- 
plause and beating its heels on the wooden floor like 
a stampede of Texas broncos. Then came a dusty 
stillness, as though the ponies had trampled the world 
and passed on, and the young Jew came timidly out 
from the wings. 

It didn’t matter what he said — nobody really lis- 
tened. Everybody wanted to look at him, the being 
from whom had sprung this stupendous play. 

A sudden terror seized Eve’s mind — the terror of 
success ! The fear of being grabbed by the throat 
and hurled round 1 and round and round and eventu- 
ally choked to death by success. The fear that suc- 
cess would never give her a moment of personal 
happiness. The fear that success would never allow 
her to escape — even after death ! 

She slipped from the dark corner of her box down 
the steps of the side exit into the alley. 

“ Producer! Producer! We want the Producer! 
Kerwin! Kerwin! Kerwin and Company ! ” 

Eve stopped, choking with excitement. Success 
already had her by the neck ! It screamed into her 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


203 


ears! She felt its tentacles tighten and tighten. 
Throwing back her head and laughing like a mad 
woman, she fled out of the alley into Broadway and 
dbwn Broadway toward the Square. 


CHAPTER XXVI 


There was a warm summer drizzle dimming the 
window-panes and the street lamps, and a seared 
stillness that always precedes the near-midnight rush 
from the theatres. 

The upper floors of all business houses were black. 
Through the shining plate-glass of first-floor lunch 
rooms and bakeries shone the low-powered night 
lights, the bare counters covered with yellow papers 
ready to receive their early morning load of hot buns, 
doughnuts, coffee-cake, and pies. 

As Eve rushed along each ray of light jumped out 
and slapped her in the face. Occasionally a night 
watchman pressed his nose against a glass pane and 
stared at the fleeing figure. At one place an officer 
stepped out of a doorway and followed her for half 
a block. 

The rain tumbled faster and she had no umbrella. 
Darting across the space in front of the Flat Iron 
Building, she turned to the right and hurried into 
Fifth Avenue. 

The world down there was painfully silent and 
dark, but not too dark for Eve to see a large man 
struggling along under an umbrella and followed by 
204 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


205 

a dog. The wind was set on getting the umbrella 
out of his hands. 

After he passed, she felt him: look back, and then 
she was conscious of the fact that his footsteps were 
not dying away as well-regulated footsteps going in 
the opposite direction should do. This discovery 
was startling, but on second thoughts it wasn’t alto- 
gether unpleasing. Eve was young and very un- 
happy and lonely, and here she was racing home to 
an empty studio. 

It had been beautiful and noble to weep alone 
through all the black nights, but, after all, being 
noble alone isn’t any more fun than being a hurt 
little child crying without an audience. 

So when Eve heard the footsteps growing dis- 
tincter behind her she began to think very brave 
thoughts indeed. She even whispered some of them 
aloud : “ I’m tired of tears ! Stanley doesn’t care ! 
Stanley never cared! I want somebody to come 
into my life who can make me laugh ! I want some- 
body who can bring me joy! ” Perhaps her reck- 
lessness was the sort that comes galloping on after 
too great a strain. 

There is no such thing as monotony even in the 
dullest life. Monotony is a state of mind, just as 
adventure is a state of mind. The people who are 
born with the adventure state of mind are the ones 
who make continuous romance, even if they never 
find a publisher. 


206 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


Eve had longed for adventure, big adventure, like 
marrying Stanley Bird and making a great man out 
of him. The little homely adventures like baking a 
cake or sweeping a floor were set down in her mind 
as drudgery. . . . 

Suddenly she remembered the great success of her 
play. She was a Broadway personality ! She 
would be rich! She would put on more and more 
plays, but unfortunately that didn’t seem to be what 
she wanted at all. And then right there she laughed 
outright. What a huge joke her ego had played 
upon her ! In that moment most of the things done 
to her by her ancestors were straightened out, and 
her belated sense of humor burst into being. It was 
all really great fun ! Why hadn’t she seen it before ? 

From heaven came a sudden cloudburst. The man 
with the umbrella and the dog rushed up and' said : 
“ Won’t you come in out of the rain? ” 

“ I haven’t sense enough ! ” laughed Eve as she 
wiped her wet face with a handkerchief. 

“ Well, then, won’t you let me use my sense just 
for this evening? ” 

“ Is it quite proper ? I don’t know you.” 

“ Nothing is really proper, and nobody ever knows 
anybody else.” 

He had a charming voice, young in intonation, 
but world old in resonance. 

He took Eve’s arm and led her over to the shelter 
of a doorway. 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


20 7 

“ This really isn’t proper,” she said, pretending to 
stiffen. 

“ Well, if it will make you any easier, I’ll tell you 
that I know your name and your history and ” 

“Not my age, I beg you ! ” 

“ Oh, I can guess that ! But what I was going to 
say was : and your friends. The fact is I’m tired of 
watching you from a distance. I tell you what I’m 
going to do: to-morrow I’m going to hunt up old 
Margate and have myself formally introduced. But 
we’ll have to let to-night count as a sort of informal 
prologue.” 

Suddenly the umbrella, acting like a naughty child 
whose parent has turned away for a moment, flopped 
and bellied and shot inside out. 

They stood there in the pouring rain laughing and 
struggling With the bent spokes. They flopped it 
back, but alas! it was no longer any good as an 
umbrella. 

Down toward the Square they proceeded, the man 
insisting upon holding up the useless object, much to 
the amusement of some people who slid by in a dry 
taxi. 

“ That’s it — a taxi ! A taxi ! My kingdom for 
a taxi ! ” He whirled about in search of one, but 
Eve turned him back. 

“ I’mi ruined, anyway, Mr. Impertinent Stranger, 
so w'hat’s the use spending money on me? ” 

“No use. So I won’t be a waster. But you’ll 


208 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


have to move along pretty briskly unless you want 
death o’ cold, pneumonia, and a public funeral.” 

“ I don’t ! ” laughed Eve as she struggled, pant- 
ing, to keep pace with his long, even stride. 

Every time they passed under a street lamp she 
was as busy looking up as he was looking down, and 
what she saw was the calm, determined face of a 
man who has made friends for ever with the sweeter 
things of life. In his whole being there was no ner- 
vousness. No struggle. Just beauty and peace and 
kindness. 

Eve was glad his shoulders were a little rounded, 
because it made her sure that they had once borne a 
burden even if it were lifted now. 

There was a firmness in the way he directed her 
across the street. A few such men exist, but the 
rest of the male world either do not attempt to help 
a woman across at all, or else they push her or drag 
her. 

A woman might trust a man with her whole future 
if he showed any brains about getting her across the 
street ! 

As they came to the Brevoort, Eve said : “ Where 
do you live ? ” 

“ Across the Square from you.” 

“ How do you know where I live ? ” 

“ I know everything about you.” 

If Eve had not completely forgotten the first part 
of her evening, she might have remembered that she 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


209 


had called a rehearsal after the play and that the 
whole cast had been invited by Margate to a party 
at a big Broadway restaurant. She might also have 
known that Jake Rosenheim, with a taxi chugging at 
the curb, would at that very moment be almost 
knocking the little black letters off the sign of Kerwin 
and Company, Typists and Producers, at Number 
Seventy-One Washington Square South. 

She remembered nothing but that she was a sort 
of little pink-checkered-apron-girl and that she was 
having a very funny time with an Irish-looking 
knickerbockered-boy who had suddenly moved into 
her neighborhood and was getting acquainted over 
the back fence. 


CHAPTER XXVII 


It’s all very well for moralists to point out the 
fact that a good-looking young woman — separated 
but not divorced — has no right to be strolling about 
at all hours of the night alone ; certainly has no right 
to have young men coming to her studio whenever 
they feel like it; most certainly has no right to> be 
wearing a continuous orohid in her belt. But while 
purists are still fighting over what the word “ right ” 
really means, most young women of the modern 
school occupy the time taking a chance. Eve was 
ultra modern. 

It was an early evening hour. There was an 
orchid in her belt, and at her feet a young man 
kneeling on a Persian prayer rug. 

“ I love you,” whispered the young man. 

Of course, that isn’t a very new way of putting it, 
but, after all, is there anything new ? 

If she had been less mother and more female she 
might have made a bit of fun, but she felt very sorry 
and very motherly, so she held his hands and 
smoothed back his hair. Of course, nobody denies 
that that also is very old business. 

“ I love you, too,” she answered. 

210 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


21 1 


The young man sprang to his feet. All young 
men do under the circumstances. “ Then you’ll 
marry me!” he gulped. 

“ Not so fast,” she answered. “ Let’s talk this 
serious business over. You don’t love me that way. 
You’re good and sweet and at the very beginning of 
your career. Look at those marvelous clippings ! ” 
She pointed to a mighty pile on the table beside 
them. 

One might have been led to believe that the young 
man wiho stood trembling before Eve was the one 
who had offered her his umbrella in the storm, but 
of course it was not that young man at all. It was 
Jack Ritz, alias Jake Rosenheim, whose play was the 
biggest thing New York had experienced in a long 
time and whose pockets, hitherto empty, were begin- 
ning to jingle, jingle, jingle with shining gold. 

Eve forced his attention to the pile of criticisms 
again. “ Now you’ve succeeded, because I believed 
in you sufficiently to risk almost nothing to put on 
your play. According to fiction, your next move is 
to ask me to marry you. I’m twenty-six, you’re 
twenty-one, and oh! how many millions of years 
older than a man of twenty-one is a woman twenty- 
six ! And then, to add to the difficulties, I’m already 
married.” 

“ But you know you haven’t seen your husband 
for over two years, and for all you know he may be 
dead.” 


212 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


“ Now, Jack, you think you hope he is dead, but 
you really don’t hope anything of the sort. I 
couldn’t marry you. I don’t love you that way any 
more than you love me that way. Why, it's all too 
ridiculous ! Let’s make a bargain.” 

“All right,” he muttered. “ What’s the bargain ? ” 
Eve began to tell off the items on her left palm 
with the index finger of her right hand. “ Good ! 
First, no more orchids — lovely, but what’s the use ? 
If you insist that my style of beauty demands them, 
I’ll leave an order with the florist to send me a daily 
decoration. Next, we are going to get after another 
play at once. Third, I’m going to be just as I was 
— your mamma-sister-friend ! ” 

“All right,” he said doggedly, but Eve detected a 
suspicion of relief in his tone. 

“ Bless its little buttons and buttonholes,” she 
said, glancing over his shoulders at the clock. “ The 
curtain is up on the two hundredth performance of 
its great play, and here it is in Washington Square 
making love to a concrete wall! I’ll race you all 
the way to the theatre ! ” 

Nobody minded the clatter down the stairway, as 
nobody in New York minds anything, and nobody 
even looked at them as they went tearing across the 
Square and through the Arch, except a big man with 
Irish blue eyes. He was sitting on a bench in a dark 
corner holding an Airedale in his lap. 


CHAPTER XXVIII 


There are certain things in life that leave a sort 
of blotting-paper effect on the human soul. Not the 
least of these is refusing to marry somebody — 
especially when one is lonely. 

Does one, then, wish to marry the man whom one 
has just refused? Certainly not! But just at that 
moment one realizes that one wishes to marry some- 
body ! • 

The play had been running for months. All 
through the summer, hot and sticky, there wasn’t 
even one vacant seat in which the weary author or 
the weary producer might rest. 

The weary author found himself besieged by re- 
quests for plays, but he always insisted that he was 
signed up body and soul with Kerwin and Company. 

The weary author, heretofore all artistic and un- 
Jewish in the matter of business, acquired a little 
motor-car and moved grandma, aunts, cousins, uncles, 
sisters, and brothers from the house in Harlem to a 
nice old place on Lexington Avenue. Also it was 
said that lie 'had been seen fumbling with things that 
he called stocks and bonds. 

The little firm of Kerwin and Company got into 
213 


214 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


the “ Personality ” column, and Eve was pigeon- 
holed beside Mary Elizabeth and Olive Shreiner and 
other great women of the age. 

Authors, long-haired authors, short-haired authors, 
successful and unsuccessful, swarmed about Number 
Seventy-One Washington Square South. They 
brought wheelbarrows of manuscripts, as though the 
mere fact of having them' copied by Kerwin and 
Company might in some miraculous way start them 
along the shimmering path to Forty-Second Street 
and Broadway. 

Eve had a Corn Exchange banking account and a 
sensible Greenwich Savings Bank account, but no 
stocks and bonds. She had an idea that such things 
were too time-absorbing. 

There were ten new typewriters and ten new 
typists. They now occupied the entire loft below 
Eve’s studio, and the rattling machines shouted 
through the none too thick flooring: “Money! 
Money ! Money ! ” and after that more success and 
then more success again. 

Little Miss Gumbiner, developing into the ablest 
of managers, moved her struggling mother and 
father, her aunts, uncles, cousins, her brothers and 
sisters, from their various tenements on Rivington 
Street to a brownstone front in Harlem. Moses, 
her baby brother, resigned his position as office boy 
and went back to high school. 

So Eve had success, success and money, but in her 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


215 


heart a monotony that was growing deadlier from 
month to month. One moment of happiness she had 
every day when she opened the morning paper and 
found Stanley’s cartoon. She loved 1 the way he 
signed his name — just the little sparrow in the 
lower right-hand corner. 

But one moment isn’t much in twenty-four hours ! 

One evening in December she stood at her window 
looking out over the deserted Square. What a buzz 
it had been all the summer ! What a human picture ! 
Now what silence and what a twilight! What a 
moment it would be for Stanley to come to her and 
take her in his arms ! She rehearsed all the things 
he would say to her. First he would tell her that it 
was she who had made him great. She would then 
proceed playfully to deny this, and he would insist 
that if she hadn’t actually made him great, she had 
had brains enough to leave him so that he might 
make himself great. 

Patiently she waited, but nothing happened. 
Finally she turned her back on the Square and lost 
herself in the warm beauty of her rooms. All the 
soft rugs, all the dull old mahogany greeted her with 
an affectionate harmony. She lighted the alcohol 
lamp under the kettle and brewed herself a cup of tea. 

Loneliness is an indefinite sort of misery, the sort 
that would welcome with enthusiasm a knife turned 
round in the heart — anything to vary the monotony ! 

And then, on the other hand, it becomes a sort of 


2 16 : THE GLORIOUS HOPE 

frozen joy. How one courts it ! How one loves it ! 
How one cherishes it! And all the while, just 
around the corner perhaps, another lonely somebody 
could easily change the whole map of one’s world ! 

Eve sat sipping her tea and looking intently at 
Stanley’s cartoons. Of late they had seemed a little 
different. They were unsteady. The little bird in 
the corner didn’t have quite the usual number of tail 
feathers. Something was wrong. She had felt it 
for a long time without admitting it. Something 
was happening to him ! Then suddenly, with the 
belief that he was calling to her all the way across 
the city, she jerked on her hat and coat and rushed 
out to him. 

Blindfolded she could have found her way to his 
tenement — that tenement that had been a glorious 
hope for them both such a little while ago ! 

She did not stop to ring the downstairs bell. Im- 
passable oceans could not have stayed her then. She 
flew up the winding stairway and pounded on his 
door. It gave back a hollow, ghostly sound. She 
knocked again. The little card holder above the bell 
was empty. Oh, well, that didn’t matter ; he prob- 
ably didn’t want his name there. Perhaps he had 
moved into a more prosperous tenement. That was 
it exactly ! Why should he remain in the cheap one 
when he was making such a lot of money ? 

She raced down the stairs to look at all the names 


THE GLORIOUS IJOPE 217 

on the mail boxes. It was too dark to read them and 
she had no matches. . . . 

If only Marj hadn’t got ill and moved away to the 
mountains ! She would have known all about him ! 

The only thing left was to ring the manager’s bell 
and ask. Eve’s legs trembled beneath her. It was 
hard — to ask a stranger the whereabouts of her 
husband, but not half so hard as not finding him now 
that the ache had slashed through her determination 
to leave him alone. 

The manager was out, and the janitor was a new 
janitor. There was no Mr. Bird living in the tene- 
ments — in fact, there hadn’t been in his time, and 
he had come more than six months ago. 

Perhaps the Painter Man would know! Eve 
looked across the street to the Painter Man’s win- 
dows — his curtainless, his unmistakable windows 
that stood open the year round to sun and rain and 
snow. They, too, were gone, and in their place 
were the closed windows of conventionality with 
dotted muslin curtains. 

Weary and confused, Eve dragged herself to the 
Second Avenue car. Suddenly her mental picture 
of Stanley vanished from its frame. So long as she 
had thought of him as comfortable and happy and 
successful in the place where she had known him, he 
had been real to her. Now, when she no longer 
knew where he was, she couldn’t even see his face. 

All the way back to the Square she kept her eyes 


2 18 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


closed, struggling to recall his features. An old 
spiritualist had once told her that so long as you can 
see the face of the beloved one you can send a mes- 
sage. When the face disappears, then the tie is 
broken. 

She could not see his face ! She knew what kind 
of hair he had, of course — light gold and unruly 
like a little boy’s. He wore it brushed back from his 
brow, and it blew in the wind. It had an obstreper- 
ous cowlick on the left side. His eyes ? Why, of 
course, they were blue. His nose, his chin — cer- 
tainly she could see each feature separately, but when 
she tried to put them together they vanished into 
nothingness. 

“ Oh, Stanley, I need you ! I need you ! ” she 
moaned. 

Then suddenly, just as she reached Washington 
Square, her feelings changed. A little black imp 
rose up from somewhere inside of her, laughed in 
her ear, and whispered: “You don’t need him as 
much as you imagine ! ” 

Was this true? Was it possible? Did the imp 
mean to suggest the — the Impertinent Stranger ? . . . 

Since the night of the storm- Eve had seen him 
once and only once, when Margate had taken them 
both out to dinner. His name was Bob Casey, and 
he had shown her where he lived on the Square just 
across from her. She had promised him a cup of 
tea some time, but as yet had never set the date. 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


219 

She had also promised some time to have tea with 
him. 

“Why not now?” whispered the imp. “He’ll 
cheer you up, and you need cheering! ” 

“No! No!” Eve insisted vehemently. But, in 
spite of her vehemence, she didn’t climb the stairs 
of Seventy-One South. Instead she walked round 
and round the Square and 1 then diagonally across, 
and then in and out the various paths pretending to 
herself she didn’t know perfectly well that no matter 
how many miles she walked in circles she would 
eventually stop and ring Mr. Bob Casey’s bell. 


CHAPTER XXIX 


Eve was bowed in by a Japanese servant and told 
to make herself happy. The funny little yellow man 
said that Mr. Casey had left word that when she 
came she was to have tea and a folio of prints to look 
at, and then she was to wait until he returned. 

The funny little yellow man offered her a big 
squashy, mulberry velvet chair, put a blue cushion 
under her feet, a tea table beside her, and served her 
tea in Gold Medallion china so encrusted with gentle- 
men, blue-birds, butterflies and roses that it must 
have taken a brush to cleanse it properly. 

For a moment Eve was furious at Mr. Casey’s 
assurance that she would come to him, but, after all, 
here she was, and that made it ridiculous to' be furi- 
ous. So she laughed, and the funny little yellow 
man smiled sympathetically, lighted a coral lamp 
over her head, gave her the folio of prints, and dis- 
appeared. 

Eve looked around Bob Casey’s home without 
getting up from her chair. 

There was a blue Chinese rug on the floor, the 
thickest, heaviest rug that Eve had ever stepped upon. 

220 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


221 


There was a frame sunk in the north wall, and 
the picture in it was the only one in the huge room. 

There were three high windows across the front, 
and the middle one was reached by some carved 
stairs, at the top of which rested a little Chinese 
temple, just framing the trees and the stars of the 
Square. 

“ I hope I haven’t kept you waiting very long,” 
said Mr. Casey, coming toward her noiselessly. 

“ You haven’t,” laughed Eve. “ I’ve been enjoy- 
ing the room. Rather fun finding out what kind of 
a man you really are.” 

“ Have you found out ? ” he inquired. His tone 
was serious, but his Irish eyes were laughing. 

“ I’m not so sure. You have Oriental taste even 
down to your servants, but so many of you artistic 
New Yorkers have that, that it alone means nothing.” 

“ But I’m not in the least artistic — I’m a dog 
trainer! Here, Anatole France! Here, boy!” he 
called, and a whimsical-looking Airedale danced into 
the room. 

“ This is the canine gentleman you have met be- 
fore, but he is just one of forty. Now we won’t do 
our tricks, but we are very highly educated.” He 
patted the dog and sent him out of the room. 

“ You mean, Mr. Casey, you are a real dog 
trainer? ” 

“Yes, a real dog trainer! Come up into my 
temple with me where we can see the night, and I 


222 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


will tell you all about myself.” He offered Eve his 
hand to pull her to her feet. 

Eve held back. “ First I want to know if you are 
married ? ” 

“ Not yet.” 

“ Then you’re engaged ? ” 

“ At present, yes — in an amusing conversation 
with you.” 

“ Mr. Casey, you know what I mean.” 

“ Indeed, I do, but I haven’t the slightest intention 
of answering you. A woman is never so interesting 
as when she is curious, and to satisfy her at once 
would mean a joy with an amputated head. I am 
holding all guillotines in reserve.” 

Eve had every intention of making him satisfy 
her curiosity about himself, but after they had gone 
up into the temple and settled themselves on a soft 
rug, to look out over the Square, it was she and not 
he who talked. To her own surprise she found her- 
self telling him everything, from beginning to end. 
He listened to her quietly. When she was done, he 
said : 

“ If you love your husband, why did you leave 
him?” 

“ Because his success meant more to me than any- 
thing in the world.” 

“ Then you didn’t love him.” 

“ I don’t understand you.” 

“ My meaning is simple. You loved what he 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


223 


represented to* you — that is, you loved being mar- 
ried to a genius. When lie proved to be ungeniusy, 
you fled. To give him a chance is what you told 
yourself, but really it was to give yourself less 
trouble. Your first mistake was in marrying when 
neither of you was passionately in love.” 

“ We were great friends. That’s a better founda- 
tion than passion.” 

“ Words, mere words, my dear. It’s difficult 
enough for two people to make a go of things even 
when they start on the basis of not being able to live 
without each other.” 

He sat watching her a moment in silence. 
Through the set stare in her eyes lie could see that 
she was thinking, 

“ I’ve never thought about that side of it,” she 
said finally. “ Nobody has ever talked to me as you 
have. All I know is that I’ve been utterly wretched 
all through my success, and I thought the wretched- 
ness was my longing for Stanley. Now you happen 
along and make me out a fool instead of a martyr.” 

He turned suddenly and put his big arm around 
her and patted her far shoulder. “ Not a bit of it ! 
There is a part of you that loves him and wants to 
do things for him. But that’s the mother in you — 
everybody has that, even men. I’ve got it strong, 
that’s why I keep the two Airedales and a Jap valet. 
But you really don’t want a man-baby, you want a 


224 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


child-baby — in fact a whole bouquet of child-babies ! 
Don’t you, now ? ” 

Eve was very tired. Just at that moment she 
didn’t look like Kerwin and Company at all, but just 
like a plain woman who has drunk her fill of the 
artistic world and longs to lie back in the arms of a 
competent business man and sleep for a million years. 

Like so many of her own generation, she longed 
with half her heart to march forward and perform 
all the radical feats that had ever been written about. 
She wanted her success, fought for and won without 
the help of anybody. She wanted her independence, 
her freedom ! And the other half of her heart raced 
back one million years in search of the superb male 
to dominate her and to give her babies and babies, 
and then more babies ! 

Eve began to cry. Eves always do that, or else 
run away, when they want to be loved. It all de- 
pends upon the Adam in the case. Eve knew that 
this particular Adam would let her run — alone, so 
she sat still and wept. 

“ Mr. Casey — please don’t think me a fool — I — 

I ” and she sobbed comfortably and deeply on 

his shoulder. 

“ Such an adorable little fool ! Don’t you think 
you ought to laugh yourself to death at the mere 
fact that my name is Casey? I do at least once 
every morning, and that keeps me in good gay spirits 
for the rest of the day.” 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


225 


“Well, it is funny to think that I ” She 

hesitated, and he finished the sentence for her: 
— * “ could be interested in a man with a name like 
Bob Casey.” 

“ Not exactly that, but almost that.” 

He laughed pleasantly. “I thought so. But let 
me tell you, young woman, there’s everything in a 
name. Think of having to fight the birthright of 
Bob Casey! It simply couldn’t be done, so I capital- 
ized it! First, I put out Bob Casey’s Lemonade 
when I was six; then Bob Casey’s Home-laid Eggs 
when I was eleven; Bob Casey’s Airedales when I 
was eighteen, and ever since. Why, a name like 
that is the biggest advertising boomerang a fellow 
ever had ! All the Irish come to see my show be- 
cause they love me, and all the rest come because 
they hate the Irish.” 

“Are you still a vaudeviller? ” Eve asked, wiping 
her eyes on his handkerchief. 

“No, I stopped that four years ago. But I’ve 
still got three companies on the road — ‘ Casey’s 
Airedales,’ giving two shows a day on good circuits, 
and sending me in a weekly Check big enough to 
allow me to settle down and enjoy art.” 

“ Do you really like pictures ? ” she asked, looking 
about the high walls, bare except for the one ex- 
quisite landscape that melted into the background 
rather than hung on it. 

“ Like pictures ? ” He walked down the temple 


226 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


steps and over toward his treasure. “ Love pictures, 
I should rather say. Don’t you see this ? ” 

“ Yes, but you’ve just got one. Seems to me if 
you loved them you’d have a great many. Your 
walls here could hold fifty with comfort.” 

He put his hand to his forehead and wailed: 
“ Fifty pictures to live with! I’d prefer a harem! 
At least you could ignore forty-nine ladies ! Come 
here ! ” He disappeared into a dark opening and 
turned on a high-powered light. 

Eve followed, and there on little shelves were ar- 
ranged pictures of every size and subject. Some 
were framed, some were unframed, some of the can- 
vases were not even nailed on stretchers. 

“ This is my storehouse. I hang one picture at a 
time. I live with it, not till I’m tired of it, but till 
I’ve made it a part of me. Then I accept an intro- 
duction to another. It’s like a lady — I’d get con- 
fused if I had to live with more than one at a time.” 

Eve didn’t quite understand his view-point, but 
she had a hot desire to fly across the Square and 
snatch down a few of her own before he got the 
chance to see them hanging in vivid battalions on 
every inch of wall. 

He led the way out of his storehouse, looked at 
his watoh, then dropped it back into his vest pocket. 
He wore neither fob nor chain. 

“ I’mi not questioning my watch to send you home, 
but to see if it’s late enough to go somewhere.” 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


227 

Eve had a sudden vision of marble and gilt cab- 
arets and shuddered. 

“ I’d just rather go home, I think. I don’t like 
restaurants much. The noise makes my head ache.” 

“ Not my kind of restaurant. I’ll take you some- 
where nice and still. Come on in here and powder 
your nose. You’ve wept your whole coating off into 
my handkerchief.” 

He opened a little box labelled : “ Don’t be ex- 
travagant,” and left her alone. 

Eve laughed. She felt very feminine and joyous, 
very dependent and expectant. In those few min- 
utes before she faced him in his large studio again 
she had unconsciously decided a number of momen- 
tous issues. 

She put on her hat and started into the hallway. 
At the top of the stairs she turned and said : “ Once 
I visited a man in this building when I first went 
into business for myself, and I was so unhappy I 
hated the place. I like it now.” 

“ I’m very glad, and I know I shall like your 
house, too, even unto the millions of pictures 
crowded on your walls.” 

Eve felt suddenly naked before him. How did he 
know she had millions of pictures? If he could see 
like that a whole block away, then he must know 
other mysterious things ! Again she felt like fleeing 
before he peeped into her mind. 

At the bottom of the stairs he laid his hand on her 


228 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


arm. “ Now, haven’t you millions of pictures, and 
didn’t you long to pull them down before I found 
out? Honest, truth ! ” 

“ Well — yes, I did, but only at first. I know 
now that it would have been dreadful if I had done 
it, because I love millions of pictures on my walls.” 

“ Then you shall always have millions of pictures 
on your walls ! ” 


CHAPTER XXX 

“ Good evening, Mr. Casey ! ” 

The waitresses all smiled at him, and greeted him 
by name. That’s worth a million dollars a minute 
to a lonely bachelor in New York. 

“ Good evening, Clara,” said Mr. Casey, as he 
pulled out a heavy Flemish oak chair for Eve. 

Serious Bohemia subdivides itself into two classes : 
first the dingy, unsuccessful, and struggling artists 
like Eve’s neighbors around Washington Square, and 
next the successful ones, who pay dues at great clubs 
about town, and still long in their secret hearts to be 
invited to tea at the Astorbilts. 

It was right into the heart of this group of artists- 
arrived that Bob Casey introduced Eve. 

The club was shining and proper like an excellent 
hotel — only much pleasanter. The people were 
well dressed and clean and too aesthetic to' handle 
money before each other in the dining-room. They 
paid by signing little slips of yellow paper. 

In Washington Square also they don’t handle 
money before each other, but for a different reason 
— they haven’t it to handle. 

229 


230 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


Casey ordered without a menu. That always 
gives a casual air to expenditure, and Eve liked it. 
She was happy — much happier than she had been 
since she stumbled into New York. 

“ Clara, give us some of those puffy little souffle 
things with fresh mushrooms and bits o<f white 
chicken, and a plain salad with the dressing I like, 
and some coffee.” 

“ What a charming place ! ” Eve beamed. “ Eve 
been invited here many times, but Tve always re- 
fused. I didn’t think it would interest me.” 

“ And it does? I wonder why? ” 

“ Perhaps because you didn’t invite me, you sim- 
ply took me ! ” 

“ That does make a difference with a woman. I 
like the place. It’s somehow sweet. It’s well got 
up but not offensive, and it represents things achieved. 
It is bourgeois Bohemia. Of course, it has its com- 
ical side, but so have funerals.” 

Someone came toward them from the other end of 
the long dining-room. 

“ Oh, Mr. Shults ! ” called Casey, and Shults 
stopped jerkily like a “ Ploch der Kaiser!” before 
his superior officer. “ Miss Kerwin, may I present 
Mr. Shults ? Mr. Shults, this is my very dear friend, 
Miss Kerwin, and I warn you, Miss Kerwin, not to 
get on the Teutonic situation, as Mr. Shults has 
strong ideas.” 

“ I promise not to argue,” said Eve, and Shults 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


231 

vv r as coaxed into a seat beside them and given a stein 
of beer as a peace offering. 

The souffle things came, and so did a man named 
Baker and a Scotch sculptor man and a cameo-faced 
woman with a lovely daughter. 

Another table was pushed up and more food or- 
dered, and they argued and came to conclusions and 
argued some more till the waitresses went home and 
the night-watchman gently but firmly turned off all 
the lights. 

Reluctantly then they got up and straggled slowly 
through the long picture gallery, criticizing this pic- 
ture or approving that one, always in technical 
phrases of many words, until at last, with hand- 
shakes and confused good nights, Eve and Casey 
came out on the Nineteenth Street side and wandered 
down towards the Square. 

What was the use of arguing with the thrill that 
shot through her every time she took his arm ? It 
was like arguing with the Twinge — it would event- 
ually get the best of her. The thrill was there and 
it was delightful, and she was tired of analyzing the 
joy out of things. 

But the mind of the dog-trainer was busy on an- 
other trail. He wanted to be married. He was 
actually hunting for a mate, not to the exclusion of 
other sports, but rather as a side issue. He liked 
little dogs — as a matter of fact, he loved them — 


232 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


and he had learned through them how much nicer 
little babies would be. 

He wanted a lot of babies — mostly girls, he be- 
lieved, with tall pink taffeta bows standing up over 
their left ears, and stiff white pinafores coming 
somewhere above the knees. He knew nothing 
about the colic and measles and whooping-cough that 
lead up to the pinafore age, nor the school books and 
courtings, and heartaches that follow after it. He 
saw the taffeta bows all around his dinner table, and 
the emotional joy in that was sufficient without going 
into details. In just the same slipshod way he ad- 
mitted that he wanted a half-dozen or so of boys, 
but he didn’t want too many. That was all he was 
certain about — he didn’t want too many, but a half- 
dozen or so would be all right. 

His ambition can be forgiven by more conservative 
and far-sighted persons when it is remembered that 
his ideas of family life had been influenced largely 
by rollicking litters of pups. Though pups only wear 
leather collars, they do* somehow get you in line for 
pink taffeta bows. 

It was nearly daylight when Eve entered her studio 
and locked the door against the outside world. 

Her heart had sung ten million joyous tunes on 
that journey back from the big Club, and it was not 
as though she had been with him for eight hours, but 
for ten million years to match the ten million joyous 
tunes in her heart. 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


233 


There was a contrasting shot of pain across the 
joyous tunes, but she couldn’t think what it was — 
she didn’t want to think what it was. 

Mechanically her clothes came off and hung them- 
selves in their proper places. A nightgown slipped 
over her head, the bed unmade itself and tucked her 
in, and there she lay flat on her back, with her eyes 
staring up through the sky-lighted roof into heaven. 

The corner of her pillow sank, and a little fluffy 
ball settled down under her ear and purred under- 
standingly. 

It was Kittums! Before Eve realized what she 
was doing she nearly squeezed the little being into 
breathlessness. 

Any less human cat would have fled in disgust, 
but Kittums merely stood up, shook herself out, 
stretched, and settled down again. 

“ Kittums, I’ve got a great heap to tell you.” 

“ Rumble, rumble, rumble ! ” purred Kittums sym- 
pathetically. 

“ You’re absolutely the only person I can trust.” 

“ Rumblety, rumblety, rumblety ! ” murmured 
Kittums’ conceit-generator. 

“ You see, it’s this way. I’ve met a man.” The 
rumbling came to a sudden stop. “ I knew you’d 
feel that way, but you needn’t, because it doesn’t at 
all mean that I’m going to do anything desperate. 
I merely want to talk it over with you to get it dear 
in my own head. That’s the only reason humans 


234 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


ever talk thing's over — they want to convince them- 
selves.” The rumbling started up again, with an 
extra little whistle on the end of each rumble. 

“ Now, Kittums, you know how I feel about Stan- 
ley.” And then the pain that had been shooting 
across her happiness made itself understood, and she 
buried her face in the soft pillow. The dam that 
she had been building to protect herself and her love 
for him cracked from: end to end and fell with a loud 
crash, and the tears that she had stored flooded 
through, destroying all the hills and valleys of peace 
that had looked so secure but a moment before. 

Kittums crawled up close, but Eve sobbed more 
and more disconsolately. 

“ Stanley, I want you ! I want you ! I don’t care 
how miserable you make me, I want you ! ” . . . 


CHAPTER XXXI 


In the stifling waiting-room at St. Luke’s Hos- 
pital, Eve ran hurriedly over her friendship with 
Marj Prouty. She remembered with a sudden pang 
the generous way in which Marj had accepted her 
upon her arrival in New York, and as she followed 
the poker-faced nurse up to Marj’s room she made a 
vow that she would see Marj every day, rain or shine, 
and nurse her back to health. 

Eve was very gay with Marj — as gay and rattly 
as Marj herself used to be. 

“ Well, Marj, dear, when did you come ? Did you 
enjoy the mountains? Where is the Shepherd? 
How long will you be here ? ” 

“ I — came — a week ago/’ whispered Marj, her 
breath jerking sharply, as though it came from a tiny 
compartment in the top of her lungs. 

“ Fine ! ” said Eve in that boisterous manner peo- 
ple assume when they are sitting vis-a-vis with death. 
“ Well, we’ll get you out of here in a few weeks, and 
then you can come down to my studio and stay with 
me. The Shepherd, too. You know I’m disgust- 
ingly rich, or will be soon, and I have two whole 
floors at Number Seventy-One.” 

235 


236 ) THE GLORIOUS HOPE 

“ I know — we heard — my Shepherd told me — 
but I’ll never leave here. I — I’m going to die.” 

That hideous fact was written beyond doubt on 
Marj’s little face, but Eve was deeply shocked that 
Marj herself should know it. 

“ Marj, dear — you mustn’t talk that way — why, 
you ” 

But the little claw hand crept out of the covers and 
clutched at Eve’s rounded palm. “ Eve, there is no 
chance.” The pale eyes closed with exhaustion, or 
went perhaps for a moment’s glimpse into the here- 
after. “ They’ve told me — you see — it’s not only 
consumption — it’s that horrible anaemia thing — 
no hope — doctors don’t know anything about it — 
except that it kills. They’ve told me — last night I 
would have thrown myself out of the window — I’m 
half dead already — the window is high — I — I 
couldn’t reach it.” 

“ But, Marj, dear, we want you here — I ” 

What else could Eve say? 

“ Please, Eve, don’t set your strong thoughts 
against mine — I want to die — to die before my 
Shepherd comes here to-night — and I want you to 
help me die — otherwise — I would not have sent 
for you — I know you hate ugly sights — those 
lovely roses — let me smell them — pansies, see, and 
red roses have souls ” 

She wandered off again, and Eve sat holding the 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


237 


little hot hand, her own fingers steady and her mind 
bewilderingly calm in the face of so much tragedy. 

“ What time, Eve? ” Marj asked, reaching for the 
flowers that had dropped to her breast. 

“ Quarter of four, dear. Can I do something for 
you ? ” 

“ Help me to die at four — everybody’s helping — 
I’ve asked them all to help. You know, Eve, I’d be 
patient if there was any hope, but it’s only a matter 
of days now and I want to go. If I don’t, my Shep- 
herd will die, too — he wasn’t made to stand — this 
— this sort of thing.” 

“ I’ll help, dear ! ” said Eve, clutching the little 
hand in her own and pressing on her brain to make 
it think but one thing — death — death — death ! 

Marj closed her eyes and moved her lips in a last 
effort to say something. 

Eve leaned over with her ear close to Marj’s 
lips. “ Pansies — see — and red — red roses — have 
souls.” 


CHAPTER XXXII 


Eve and Casey had gone up into the Temple again. 
Suddenly in the stillness he spoke : 

“ I love everything. I love everybody. My par- 
ents were happy, so how can I help it ? I love little 
things most of all, and little babies most of all little 
things. I’ve succeeded because I’ve never once 
waited for anything marvelous to happen. I wasn’t 
fed on fairy tales, so I don’t believe in luck — that is, 
not much. I just went on doing the nearest thing at 
hand so that jobs shouldn’t accumulate. That’s why 
a farm is good training — you simply have to do 
insignificant chores all the time. I don’t discount my 
beautiful health and my beautiful boyhood — they 
were assets, and the fellow who gets anywhere with- 
out them is a mystery to me. I’m going to start out 
to-morrow and find Stanley Bird, and if I don’t find 
him I’m going to get you a divorce by default, and 
then I’m going to marry you, and we’ll buy a place 
near New York where your long right arm can reach 
your work and your short left one, nearest the heart, 
can pet your babies.” 

If Eve had been more astute she might have known 
that her aching sob and her lonely wail of : “ Stan- 
238 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


239 

ley, I want you! I don’t care how miserable you 
make me, I want you ! ” was a cry of sex. 

If she had been more astute she might have known 
that she didn’t want Stanley at all, but Bob Casey ! 
Casey, with his great broad shoulders and his great 
broad humor ! Casey, made to be father of many as 
she was made to be mother of many ! Casey, whose 
quiet manner covered the power to bend her, twist 
her, break her if he wanted to ! Casey, the superb, 
the dominating male! 

He wanted Eve. The call ol love was hungry in 
his throat, and Eve, like the female of the species, 
was ready to dash down the mountain-side, tear her 
flesh in the briars, swim the icy water, stagger along 
weary and famished — anything, so that she might 
answer that call ! 

In the million years that elapsed during the second 
before Eve found herself crushed against him she 
felt the press of certain inherited puritanical ideas of 
duty, certain compunctions of conscience concerning 
her husband. But the powerful arms of the other 
man swept them aside. 

Of course, in such cases there are terrible regrets 
when the woman is alone again. She formulates in- 
tricate arguments against any further acquaintance 
with the other man, and all the while she is perfectly 
sure that she will answer again when he calls to her 
even across so wide a desert as Washington Square! 

Eve moved quietly out of Casey’s arms, so that 


240 


, THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


she might have the infinite pleasure of tumbling into 
them again. 

She said : 

“ There are lots of things that we must discuss — 


“ We what? ” asked Casey abruptly. 

Eve stood silent against a pillar of the Temple like 
some dark figure collecting evidence. 

Again Casey said : 

“ What?” 

“ Oh, so much ! ” she whispered excitedly, pressing 
her palms together in an effort to force the words 
into her tongue. “ So much — Eve no divorce — my 
husband — I can’t marry you unless I’m free. Stan- 
ley — perhaps he needs me still — perhaps ” 

The man who' has once stirred the woman he 
wants is foolish not to keep on stirring her, at least, 
until she is so well mixed that she can no longer say : 
“This I regret; this I must not do; this is wrong; 
this is right ! ” 

Casey reached out and drew her towards him. He 
kissed the velvet under her chin and then, pressing 
her lips hard against hers, held her close till the 
tenseness in her body relaxed and she gave way con- 
tentedly in his arms. 

“ What? ” he asked again. 

“ Bob, dear, there hasn’t ever been anything like 
this before ! But Stanley — you’ve got to help me — 
what if he wants me again?” 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


241 


“You don’t want him again, do you?” 

“ One part of me does.” 

“ Now look here, Eve, do be sensible and drop all 
this neurotic stuff. You lived with him long enough 
to know that you were both miserable. Am I 
right ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“Well, life ought to be more gracious than to 
thrust you into each other’s way again. Life’s just 
full of purposes — great beautiful purposes, if people 
would only not meddle with them. I’m going down 
to the American to-morrow to* talk it over with him 
myself. I’ll guarantee that he’ll allow you to get 
a God-fearing divorce on the one ground that our 
noble State allows.” 

“ You travel too fast, Bob! ” she laughed, patting 
his great hand. 

“ It can’t be too fast for me. Now about Stan- 
ley : I honestly thing he doesn’t want you any more. 
No criticism of you, my dear ! I want a lady lioness ; 
but for a man like Stanley, timid, artistic, imagina- 
tive — why, a woman like you drives him' crazy. 
Am I right? Tell me! ” He made her look up at 
him. “Ami?” 

“ Yes, you’re right. Women like me are lionesses. 
We’ve got to do things. We’ve got to make our hus- 
bands do things. We’ve got to run them, and if 
they’re the kind that can’t be run, instead of helping 


242 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


them we paralyze them. Poor Stanley, all he wanted 
was to be let alone.” 

“ His work proves that, doesn’t it? ” asked Casey. 

“ It’s not as good as it was. Something’s been 
happening to him,, I’m sure.” 

“ Your own work, Eve, I want you to keep going 
— some of it, the interesting part, but from now on 
I want Miss Gumbiner to run that typewriting busi- 
ness alone. Give her not only half the profits, but 
twenty-five a week besides. That will relieve you, 
and if I hear of you getting up again any day before 
noon, I’ll divorce you ! ” 


CHAPTER XXXIII 


“ Cream, please, and no sugar. Cream: is nour- 
ishing, but sugar is a chemical poison. I hope, Miss 
Kerwin, that you don’t eat sugar ! ” 

Is there anything in the catalogue of social usage 
that bridges distances like a tea table? The person 
who invented it should long ago have got the Nobel 
Prize. 

Eve answered her guest carefully. " Well, I do 
occasionally take sugar, but I won’t if you say it’s 
bad for me.” 

He was a tall, misshapen man with quick, ferret 
eyes that seemed always to be escaping pursuit. His 
shoulders were crooked, and his under teeth stood so 
far out beyond his upper ones that it gave him, along 
with his clumps of yellow hair, the aspect of a weary 
camel. 

Poor camel-man ! He sat with his battered cap in 
one hand and a voluminous manuscript in the other. 

He seemed confused about the cup of tea because 
he hadn’t a third hand. 

“ Do put your cap down and drink your tea. Let 
me have your cap.” 

Pie glared unspeakable things at her and stuffed 
243 


244 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


his cap behind him in his chair. “ You don't take 
lemon, Miss Kerwin! Lemon turns the tannin into 
poison! It makes the lining of your stomach like 
leather! ” 

All the lemons that Eve had ever taken with tea 
began to parade before her, and she could actually 
feel how brown she was inside. 

“ To tell the truth, Mr. Culpepper, I used to be 
awfully germy and all that, but I’ve had so much 
work to do' in the past few years that I’d almost 
forgotten. I surely will not take lemon if you think 
it’s bad for me. Have some cookies ? ” 

“ Heavens, no ! ” he gasped, at the same time 
deftly extracting a little tissue-paper package from 
his pocket. “ Have some health bread. I always 
carry it with me. Nuts and raisins — quite a meal 
in itself! ” 

Eve struggled politely to eat the tasteless stuff, but 
after a brave effort was forced to hide it in her 
napkin and backslide to cookies. 

“ Have one more cup, Mr. Culpepper, and then tell 
me about the manuscript.” Eve filled his cup, and he 
sipped it tenderly. 

“ You want me to make a final copy, Mr. Cul- 
pepper? ” 

“Oh dear, no! I do my own typing. Always 
wonder how a person can trust a final copy to an 
outsider — so important, the final copy — so much 
more important than the original draft ! One might 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


245 


trust that to almost anyone.” He began to shuffle 
through the loose leaves. “ I want you to publish my 
play. It is called ‘ The Breath of God/ 

“ But Pm not a publisher. I don’t know the first 
thing about publishing; and, besides, I haven’t any 
money to put into such a venture.” 

“ Well, I hoped you might be willing to risk, say, 
five hundred dollars, to print enough copies for the 
reviewers, and then, if the thing made any kind of 
a stir, somebody would print more, and then for 
your five hundred I’d give you half interest in the 
production of the play. It’s a great play ! I assure 
you, it’s a great play ! ” 

Most women would have laughed in his face, but 
Eve took the manuscript and promised to read it. 
All the way down the stairs he kept looking back at 
her with his camel-face urging her to' go into the 
matter carefully. 

She almost pushed him out, she was so anxious to 
be alone again with all the unhappy mysteries that 
clouded her brain. Stanley had disappeared. No- 
body knew where he was. His comics had been con- 
tinued by another artist for ages past. Thinking 
back, she could remember almost the day of the 
change. She got down her scrap-book and was able 
to turn at once to the very last thing that Stanley had 
done. She jerked out the new man’s work and 
burned it in the grate. 

Of course, she was glad that Bob had managed it 


246 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


all so well, but with the quick granting of the divorce 
and the severing of her life with Stanley there fell a 
great blot across the white scheme of things, with 
the knowledge that, no matter what success she 
might have now, no matter how many exquisite chil- 
dren; she might bear, no matter how much she might 
come to love her new husband, one thing would al- 
ways stand out clear and definite — her unsatisfied 
love for Stanley. . . . Isn’t it in the human order 
of things that the one big task that we fail to accom- 
plish should sting us into everlasting remembrance 
of it ? 

She was free. The courts had said so. She might 
do as she pleased, live as she pleased. She ought to 
be happy, but she was wretched. Her breath came 
thickly and seemed to hurt half-way up. Bob had 
tired of her moods and was gone away cruising. She 
was to fight it out alone. Her legs were leaden ; her 
head a battlefield of emotions. The terror of inde- 
cision was upon her. 

Maddened by the necessity of escaping from her- 
self, she picked up the camel-man’s play. 

At ten, at twelve, at two, at four she was still 
turning the pages. At six, she snapped off the lights 
and raised the curtain to the valiant August sun. 

At seven she had read the last word. 

The camel-man, indeed, the gentle fool upon whom 
in her ignorance she had smiled in kindly scorn! 
Well, he was a fool — a God’s fool, a genius ! Who 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


247 


was he ? Whence had he come ? Had he ever writ- 
ten anything before ? And who was she that such a 
manuscript should come falling straight from heaven 
into her folded hands ? 


CHAPTER XXXIV 


Had not the camel-man come swinging across the 
wastes with health bread in his pockets and a mar- 
velous play in his hands, Eve might have had a 
nervous breakdown. 

Under the spell of “ The Breath of God ” she 
didn’t have the time. It was after the Lanes had 
accepted it that she sent a note to Mr. Ames asking 
for an interview. 

Up the thick-carpeted stairway she climbed to his 
private office above “ The Little Theatre.” There 
was a silence and sweetness about the place that made 
her feel Winthrop Ames could not exist away from 
the things he loved. 

“Another marvelous horror, Miss Kerwin?” He 
asked the question with his fine head cocked a trifle 
to the side. 

“No, sir!” she whispered, leaning across as 
though she were a little girl confiding in her papa. 
“A marvelous marvel ! The most gorgeous tale 
ever told in this world, and all the fairies in it are 
real people ! It is just the opposite of realism, earthi- 
ness, and fact, and yet, Mr. Ames, it might all very 
well be the truth.” 

248 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


249 


His bloodless, aquiline face was immediately re- 
sponsive. “ Why don’t you put it on yourself, Miss 
Kerwin? ” 

“ Mr. Ames, I’d bungle it ! It’s your kind of play. 
It’s for the man who isn’t afraid to buy ten thousand 
dollars’ worth of props, even if he has to throw them 
all away. It’s for the man who put on ‘ The Chil- 
dren of Earth,’ Mr. Ames, for the man who knows ! ” 

Wasn’t it human of him to sit there and smile at 
Eve ? She could have wept with gratitude. 

“ Miss Kerwin, you would make a great actress.” 

“ A very bad actress, if you’ll excuse me. I’ve 
tried it. I couldn’t work nightly with imaginary 
problems. My problems have got to be real ! ” 

Mr. Ames has a reputation for seldom expressing 
his enthusiasm, but he cocked his head sideways 
again and laughed like a boy. “ Well, I’ll run 
through it this evening. Come back to-morrow at 
this time, and if it’s what you say it is we’ll startle 
New York with it sometime during the coming 
winter.” 

Eve raced away with a jumpy joy inside her such 
as she hadn’t felt for years. In fact, the only other 
time that she ever had felt it was in the dim greyness 
of that morning when she left Port Illington, when 
the fast train rushed on through the daybreak into 
the mysteries of the years that lay before her. 

Some of those years she had lived — wasted, per- 
haps, so far as personal happiness was concerned, but 


250 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


then again not wasted if she could feel still the 
young, pounding sensation of things straight before 
her still to be attained. 

She bought a cocky little black velvet tarn and a 
ruff to match it and a new blouse. After that she 
climbed on top' of a Fifth Avenue ’bus and joggled 
down to the Arch. 

The only reason Mr. Ames did not stay up all 
night reading “ The Breath of God ” was that he 
read more quickly than Eve. It is enough to say his 
enthusiasm, that so few people ever saw, stirred and 
boiled over. When Eve arrived at the appointed 
hour next day all the pessimism, for which he is 
famous, had been bound and drugged and carted off. 

“ Miss Kerwin, you’re right : a play like this 
doesn’t happen oftener than once in a century. It 
is all that you think it is. There is only one thing 
that bothers me now: the man to do the sets.” 

Eve sat perfectly silent, pressing her hands to- 
gether till they ached. So she had been right ! Win- 
throp Ames was saying so ! 

“ There is a man over in Paris, an Aubrey Beards- 
ley person by the name of Moineau. Greater than 
Bakst, I think. He hasn’t Bakst’s orientalism, but 
then he isn’t oriental — he’s French. He has a deli- 
cate imagination, almost feminine. I’ve never in my 
life seen such colors as he paints. I didn’t know 
there were such colors.” 

** I’ve never even heard of him, Mr. Ames, but he 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


251 


seems to be the fairy prince to do this fairy play.” 

“ Yes, he’s the man. But how to get him to do it ? 
He’s so much the vogue in Paris, so beyond reach, 
he’d never even acknowledge a written request. I 
wish I were going to Paris myself at this time.” 

“Can’t you send someone, Mr. Ames? It would 
be worth it.” 

“ Yes, I must send someone; but no ordinary com- 
mercial agent would do. He’d never get any nearer 
than a letter.” 

“ Mr. Ames,” Eve ventured in a voice a little 
shaky with excitement, “ mightn’t I be a suitable 
person? Couldn’t I do it? ” 

He looked at her quickly and answered : “ Yes, 
you could do it. You’re the very person, Miss 
Kerwin.” 


CHAPTER XXXV 


In the quiet of her cabin, with the whistles shriek- 
ing overhead and the shout for all visitors to leave 
the ship dinning in their ears, Bob crushed Eve 
tightly in his arms. “ Dearest,” he whispered, “ I’m 
glad we were married this morning ! I am glad, too, 
that you’re getting this great chance. You deserve 
it. Your success is just another guarantee that my 
judgment in loving you so much is correct. But 
remember one thing, dear : I’m here waiting for you 
every moment of the time until you come back.” 

She clung to> him as she had never clung to any- 
body in her life. Her hands were passionately 
caressing his eyes, his lips, his hair. She pressed her 
face against his and felt their cheeks cling where her 
tears cemented them together. Again and again she 
jerked herself out of his arms only to' fly back again, 
breathless for his protection. 

Big, brave fellow that he was, all the words had 
gone out of his head. “ I’m glad you married me 
this morning, dear,” was all that he could find in the 
great treasure-house of beautiful things he had in his 
heart to say to her. 

“ It’s so hard to go,” she sobbed, “ so hard to go 
252 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


253 


away! I’ll come back quickly ! I’ll come back 
quickly ! ” Then the whistles shrieked again, and 
Casey disappeared. 

The band was playing something that made Eve 
weep more. She felt at last the soft rocking of the 
ship, and picking up her little Irish flag that was the 
mate to one he had in his pocket, she struggled up 
to the promenade deck and pushed her way through 
to the railing. 

The ship slid out past the cheering mob on the 
pier. Everybody on board was straining to get one 
last glimpse of somebody on land. The people on 
the pier cheered bravely — they were certain about 
themselves — the people on the ship waved their 
hands in silence. 

Eve struggled to get one last look at her husband, 
but the tears were streaming so* fast that all she could 
do was to wave her little Irish flag and pretend to 
see. Suddenly her vision cleared, and there, in the 
back of the dimming mob, rose a hand that clutched 
a bit of green silk. 

“ Oh — oh — oh !” was all that she could find to 
say, and then again the tears flooded out the beauty 
of the world. 


CHAPTER XXXVI 


Eve felt a stir as she entered the room. It was an 
American party in Paris. She knew she was strik- 
ing, with her black hair brushed straight back from 
her forehead and her high-waisted black gown bil- 
lowing over silver roses down to her silver slippers. 

“It was awfully good of you to let me come, Mrs. 
Hartman, ” Eve said as she clasped the hand of the 
hostess. “ This is my one day of frivolity. To- 
morrow I go to work !” 

Mrs. Hartman was an American who had lived in 
Paris in the same apartment for thirty years. She 
always insisted that she couldn’t move because, if 
she did, her odd friends coming back to Paris would 
never be able to find her. 

“ I’m going to take you around and introduce you 
myself, Miss Kerwin, and then leave you to your 
fate.” 

She piloted Eve to a group of Californians, “Miss 
Kerwin, may I present Mr. Clifford, Mr. Baldwin, 
Mr. Kane — all from the Golden West.” 

They all three struggled for Eve’s hand at the 
same time, and said in chorus : “ Ever been in Cali- 
fornia? ” 


254 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


255 


Everybody in the little group burst into laughter. 

“ Of all homesick people,” confided Mrs. Hart- 
man, “ Californians are the most dreadful. When- 
ever you see a crowd of them together you may be 
sure they are discussing Chinamen and fogs.” 

“ Wish I had a chestful of it now,” muttered 
Kane. 

“ What ? Chinamen ?” asked Eve. 

“No! F-o-g — fog!” He spelled the word 
with a worshipful tenderness. “ Really, Miss Ker- 
win, ever been in California? ” 

“ No,” she answered. Then she added, gushingly : 
“Tell me all about it ! ” 

“ I beg of you, Miss Kerwin, don’t start him ! ” 
laughed Mrs. Hartman, pulling Eve away. “ He’s 
worse than a man about his first baby. Come, meet 
all the people and then choose for yourself. Just you 
get into the hands of a homesick Californian early 
in the evening, and you might as well decide on what 
message you want to leave your folks.” 

Mr. Kane followed Eve as she floated about with 
the incredible little old lady and met another group 
and another, and felt, with a certain warmth of satis- 
faction, that people were discussing her. 

She hoped they all knew that she was a producer 
of plays. She also very much hoped that they had 
found out her errand in Paris. She had hinted in 
undertones that she was frightfully busy. Of course, 
people always asked, “ Doing what? ” and then she 


256 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


told them, in an off-hand, reticent way what she was 
dying for them to know. 

“ If you’ll tell me all about yourself, Miss Ker- 
win,” Mr. Kane was saying, “ I’ll tell you all about 
California.” 

Eve drew a deep preparatory breath when sud- 
denly her attention was caught by the figure of a 
lovely little creature who stood for a moment in the 
silken frame of the doorway. 

She might have stepped from a pink and white 
canvas by Watteau. Her red lips were parted and 
there was a warm eagerness in her blue eyes. She 
had about her that appeal of love which all women 
long to possess. 

Eve would have known that she was a mother even 
if Mr. Kane had not whispered: ‘‘Little French 
woman. Two of the loveliest new babies you ever 
saw in your life; twin girls of her very own and 
two boys that were nobody’s. Got an idea that she 
can only properly thank God for her own by taking 
in two foundlings.” 

And then Mrs. Hartman took the little satin shep- 
herdess by the hand, and together they trailed about 
the room greeting old friends and meeting new 
ones. 

“ Miss Kerwin,” Mrs. Hartman said, “ this is 
Madame Moineau. You must know each other.” 

Eve glowed with pleasure. “ Moineau ! Are you 
the wife of the Moineau ? ” 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


257 


“ I am wife of ver’ dear man — ze Moineau to me, 
and I am proud I can say ze Moineau to all world, 
but for different reason/' ’ 

“ I see,” said Eve. “ You’d love him even if he 
didn’t make the most fantastic scenery in all the 
world!” 

“ Would love him if he do nothing but be my 
Monsieur Moineau.” 

“ That’s heavenly — I mean loving like that. But 
I’m interested for another reason. I came all the 
way to Paris to beg your Monsieur Moineau to de- 
sign the scenery for a new play I am helping to put 
on back in America,” 

“ You help to put on play? Then you have none 
of babies ? ” The little woman pressed Eve’s hand 
sympathetically. 

“ No, I haven’t any babies, but some day I hope to 
have. Putting on plays won’t keep me from having 
babies, will it ? ” 

“ Oh, yes — you would not want to make plays — 
I think perhaps you make ze play because you will 
like to have ze baby.” 

“ Oh, no, really, I could do both, and I hope to do 
them both well. You see, Americans must have pro- 
fessions, too.” 

“And zis is not professions — having baby ? ” 
There was not the slightest hint of irony in Madame 
Moineau’s voice, only innocent inquiry. 

“ Well, of course, having babies is the noblest pro- 


258 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


fession, but it’s no longer enough.” Eve accepted 
a salad from a colored servant and asked Madame 
Moineau to share the divan with her and Mr. Kane, 
who had succumbed to a fit of melancholy because 
nobody was talking about California. 

“ Is Monsieur coming to-night ? ” asked Eve, 
hoping to fall into his good graces by first capturing 
his little wife. 

“ Oh, no, he is out in ze land — what you say, 
country. You see, sky he paint in studio my hus- 
band say is no sky, no color, no nothing. He paint 
each sky from God’s model, zen he catch him always 
different. God make his model lovely and free.” 

“ But he will come back soon ? ” asked Eve. 

“ Oh, yes, he is only at St. Cloud. He is come 
back to-morrow midday. You come first to my 
house, we shall make surprise. Oh, he like ver’ much 
pleasant surprise. I will show you four baby. He 
will be more please when you admire baby as when 
you admire sky. He say baby is greatest work of 
art and we must have baker’s dozen ! ” 

In the morning there wasn’t any sunshine; there 
wasn’t any rain; just a foggy indecision of atmos- 
phere that threw Paris into the sulks. 

“ Just like life,” Eve whispered into her satin muff 
as she hurried along toward the river. “ Nobody 
ever sees very far ahead, and that’s why we can be 
brave.” The next moment she forgot what she was 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


259 

saying and bought a bag of hot chestnuts from a 
street vendor. 

It was heavenly to be in Paris ; to look into the 
lighted shop-windows ; to bump into strange figures 
in the fog; to stand on the quay and watch the 
slender boats dart up out of the dimness and dis- 
appear like porpoises into the greyness again. 

At last the sun grew braver. One by one candles 
and lamps blinked out. The world popped up clear 
and workaday with nothing of mystery left. 

Eve lifted the brass knocker on Monsieur Moi- 
neau’s door. A little starched maid, looking exactly 
as though she had stepped from a comic opera 
chorus, took Eve’s wraps and ushered her into- a 
beautiful room. 

Heavy chenille carpets silenced her steps as she 
walked about examining the wonders that hung 
everywhere — paintings, prints, old brackets, minia- 
tures, silhouettes, all resting harmoniously against 
velvet walls of Gobelin blue. 

It was the home of a lover of possessions filled to 
crowding with things he could not exist without. 

How different from 1 Bob Casey’s studio in Wash- 
ington Square ! Bob was the collector whose posses- 
sions must be shown one at a time lest they struggle 
with each other for supremacy. 

In Moineau’s house there was no struggle. Each 
treasure hung or stood close to its neighbor in a 


26 o 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


co-operative fashion for the good of all. The whole 
place was peace and harmony and luxurious love. 

From somewhere in the house came the twittering 
and rustling of babies, and over it all the sweet voice 
of the mother bird, chirping gaily as she preened 
their feathers for presentation to< the world. 

Eve advanced to meet them. Downstairs they 
came — babies, white-capped nurse, chirping mother, 
and behind them all a man. Suddenly to Eve the 
world went black, and terror filled her heart. She 
closed her eyes, denying the truth of her sight. She 
opened them again, and the man was still — Stanley ! 


CHAPTER XXXVII 


His golden hair was brushed back from his fore- 
head, and a small moustache and imperial gave his 
face a courtly slimness. 

There was a new lift to his head ; a new strength 
and straightness to his backbone; a new power in 
his eyes. 

“ Zis is my husband, Miss Kerwin, and zose our 
family,” said the little woman, and the joyous tone in 
which she sang “ husband ” and “ family ” and the 
little trail of rippling laughter that followed, gave 
Eve an added moment in which to struggle against 
utter collapse. 

Stanley took Eve’s hand, and instantly the demand 
that shot from his eyes was answered by a promise 
from hers. 

He spoke first : “ This is a very great surprise. I 
did not know that we had a visitor. My little woman 
is always surprising me with something lovely.” He 
dropped Eve’s hand and took one of the girl babies 
from his wife’s arms. 

“ Kiss the beautiful American lady, Jaqueline,” he 
coaxed, pressing the infant’s soft face against Eve’s 
cheek. 


261 


262 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


Eve held out her quivering arms, and Stanley laid 
his baby in them'. She held the little bundle very 
close to her heart. 

“ Zey are ver’ friendly, our little girls, are zey not, 
Miss Kerwin, and our little boys zey are friendly, 
too.” 

The nurse held up one of the little boys, and he 
opened his tiny pink mouth and touched Eve straight 
on the lips. 

Eve knew that she must say something. Her body 
trembled, her brain ached, and her lips were cold and 
stiff. She mumbled she knew not what, and then, 
with a desperate effort, sank into a chair, saying: 
“ Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man.” 

It wasn’t very inventive, and the baby was entirely 
too young to be amused by the jingle, but it was a 
way of gaining time. 

Every moment helped. She laughed a little and 
the baby smiled, and at last, feeling suddenly alive 
again, Eve was able to talk. 

“ These are the very loveliest babies in all the 
world! Madame Moineau, you must be a sort of 
universal mother to take in little strangers with all 
you have to do for your own daughters. Monsieur, 
did you get your sky ? Was it foggy in the country ? 
Did you go far? I was so afraid you wouldn’t see 
me that I paved the way to success through your 
wife.” 

Of course, Eve knew that she was rattling on like 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 263 

a mad woman, but Madame Moineau probably 
thought that all American ladies rattled on. 

Came another hideous silence, and Stanley told 
his wife to take the babies away. Eve clung to them. 

“ Oh, don’t ! ” she begged. “ I love babies ! They 
really don’t bother me at all ! I want them ! ” 

“ Oh, ver’ well, Miss Kerwin, but you know we 
French peoples show our baby, zen put him back in 
ze nursery. It is different in America, my husband 
tell me. Zere ze baby put ze parent back in ze nur- 
sery ! ” The little woman came close to her hus- 
band and looked up with a worshipful smile. 

All that Eve longed for at that moment was a mil- 
lion years in which to look and look at the changes 
in Stanley. She didn’t at all want to make conver- 
sation with the loving doll under his arm. 

About Stanley there was an aura of power and 
defiance. He had a new way of snapping his teeth 
together suddenly, as though he were going to push 
through a mob and probably kill forty or fifty people 
on the way. He was the huge male animal standing 
there beside his timid female. The drop of his eyelid 
was her law, and she looked up into his face as 
though to obey that law was the thing for which the 
divine God had created her. 

“ Shall you remain long in Paris, Miss Kerwin ? ” 
asked Stanley. 

It was the very question that she had seen waver- 


264 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


ing in his eyes, the very question she knew she must 
answer before they could proceed on friendly terms. 

“ Only long enough to get you to sign a contract 
with Winthrop Ames, Monsieur Moineau.” 

“ Me ! ” he gasped, and she thought she detected 
a certain bending of his spine — - a certain drooping 
of his shoulders. 

“ You ! ” she gasped back, laughing as she gasped 
and thankful in her soul to be able to burrow through 
the strain to a joking imitation of his surprise. 
“ You! ” she repeated. “Aren’t you the greatest de- 
signer in Paris? Hasn’t Mr. Ames sent me all the 
way over just to get a personal promise from you? 
You will design the sets for Mr. Ames, won’t you? ” 

“ Why, yes, certainly. It’s a great honor. But 
aren’t you exaggerating a bit ? Of course, though, I 
know my position and I know what I can do, and, 
furthermore, I know what I am going to do in the 
future, and that’s something that will startle even 
Mr. Ames ! ” 

Eve saw that Stanley was losing his temper with 
her and quite in the old-fashioned way. The fear 
that Madame Moineau might get a glimmer of what 
was going on in his mind brought her abruptly to 
her feet. 

“ I must look at the babies a moment longer, and 
then perhaps we had better go to your studio and 
talk business, Monsieur Moineau.” 


CHAPTER XXXVIII 


All the way across the little park that separated 
the studio from the home Eve and Stanley walked in 
silence. There was an animal defiance in him as he 
threw his shoulders back. There was a crying 
weariness in her that crept down into her dragging 
feet. 

Suddenly they stopped at the entrance of the sky- 
lighted building, and their eyes met. She knew that 
passionate look in his. The answer was written 
broad across her own face. 

He turned from her, unlocked the door and flung 
it open. She thought he meant to lead the way and 
they collided. 

Eve’s finger-tips flew to her eyes, and she pressed 
hard on the closed lids as though to shut out the 
sight of him and his wife and their babies. Utterly 
unable to move from the spot, she leaned against the 
door- jamb — all her defiance gone, all her power. 

There were no tears in Stanley’s eyes. His head 
was erect, his shoulders stiff. He put his arms about 
her and lifted rather than guided her up the three 
flights of narrow stairs. 

265 


266 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


In the studio he sank into a low chair and covered 
his face with his hands. 

Through and through Eve’s being surged all the 
old agony — every drop of blood in her body crying 
for his love. She stood before him sobbing : “ Oh, 
Stanley, why couldn’t you and I have gone like this 
— why couldn’t you have succeeded with me, 
dear! What is there in this woman that I haven’t 
got? Tell me, Stanley! Tell me!” 

His lips trembled and his voice came unsteadily : 

“ She believes in me. She’s the first person who 
ever did. She hasn’t any brains — just love. If I 
explain an idea, she doesn’t understand what I mean, 
but she listens like a little mouse, and when I’m 
through she tells me she loves me. She loves what I 
do because I do it. She kisses each finger every 
morning before I go to work and tells them to make 
beautiful pictures. And I love her for it. Oh, Eve, 
we have been so hap'py ! So sensibly happy ! So full 
of pleasures and successes ! I worship her for bring- 
ing out the best in me. Sometimes I wonder if she 
hasn’t more sense than all the women in the whole 
world put together. I wonder if she hasn’t too much 
sense to show me she has any. She’s always tactful, 
always loving, always incredibly where I want her. 
We had a dreadful time at first. I was working at 
St. Cloud.” He laughed bitterly. “ Starving at St. 
Cloud — when she found me and took me home to 
her old mother. They were very poor, but they fed 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 267 

me and let me sleep in their shop among the coal-oil 
cans and ropes and candles and firewood at night, 
and in the daytime I worked out of doors. Always 
struggling with the old ideas. I never lost faith in 
the big things ; it was only the little ones that drove 
me mad. The first real canvas was born at St. Cloud, 
and the others came quick like a flood through the 
broken place in a dam. I brought them to town. 
I sold them and got orders for more and more and 
more. It was like a colossal dream — I sprang into 
life in one short month. I’m made, Eve! I’m a 
great man ! You know now that I’m a great man if 
Winthrop Ames would send you all the way to Paris 
to buy me ! ” 

“ Do you know what I’ve been doing? ” she asked, 
and suddenly he darted from his chair and strode up 
and down the room, kicking at the floor as though he 
would destroy it utterly. 

“ Do I know ? ” he shouted. “ I’ve watched every 
step you’ve taken ! God, how I hate that ambition in 
you — it kills absolutely every fibre of energy I’ve 
got ! You understand too damn’ well ! A man with 
ideas would waste ’em, on you — talk ’em out ! Live 
with a woman like the one I’ve married, and you 
can’t make her understand an idea ! I’ve got to paint 
it out in colors, and even then she thinks it’s great 
only because I’ve done it.” 

He stopped in front of her and shook his fist in 
her face. 


268 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


“ I’m a great man — great ! Do you under- 
stand? ” 

He began to pace again. 

“ Nobody over here knows who- I am. Nobody 
knew I had a wife in America when I married here. 
It was a reckless thing to do, but I knew you’d 
divorce me sooner or later and I wanted to have her 
beside me all the time. I couldn’t wait. I took the 
big chance and depended on your decency to keep 

still if you ever found out. And the name ” He 

laughed good-naturedly at last. “ I took the name 
Moineau after the little sparrow I used to sign in the 
lower right-hand corner of my stuff. You remem- 
ber? I couldn’t think of anything else at the 
moment. I’ve been Moineau ever since.” 

He took Eve’s two' hands and smoothed them 
gently up and down in the old way that used to quiet 
her nerves. 

Wild things were beating her brain into madness. 
If he would only take her in his arms ! If he would 
only come back to her, she would learn all the things 
the other woman knew ! She would be careful ! She 
would kiss his finger-tips each morning ! She would 
love him and love him and love him ! 

“ Eve,” he whispered, “ now that I’m great, if I 
had you back I’d not only be great, I’d be the great- 
est man in the world! I want our long talks to- 
gether. In the old days I never had you for a 
minute. You treated me like a child. I want you 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 269 

entirely. I want your body and your heart and your 
soul — I want you ! ” 

He placed his two hot hands on her shoulders. 
She could feel her heart throb in her throat. What 
if he should hold her close to him! Her resistance 
was ebbing! 

He laughed hysterically. “A great idea has just 
occurred to me, Eve — a really funny idea. Eve 
had my success. Eve shown the world what I can 
do — my ego is satisfied. After all, that’s the prin- 
cipal joy of success — showing somebody ! Putting 
it over the dubs back in our home town that said we 
were crazy ! What if I should refuse to work any 
longer? Suppose you and I go away together and 
be happy tramps, and play and play and play for ever 
until the very end of life ! ” 

Slowly he slumped into a chair. His fine blond 
hair looked suddenly mussed and untidy. Even the 
exquisitely tailored coat that had seemed so perfect 
a fit a few moments before rode high over his collar, 
as though it had not been made for him. The old 
lazy look crept over his body as he crossed his legs 
and relaxed on the middle of his spine. 

“ Eve, come over here and sit down. I want to 
talk to you. Eve been the goll derndest fool the 
way Eve worked since I left America. I did it just 
to spite you — you devil, for the way you deserted 


270 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


His tie had pulled loose and lumpy, and there was 
a crumpled look about his cuffs. 

Just then the brass knocker pounded against the 
panels of the downstairs door. 

“ My model,” Stanley said. “ Let her wait! ” 

Eve drew a quick breath. 

“ Let her come up, Stanley, dear, let her come 
up!” 

Stanley caught both of Eve’s hands and mashed 
them brutally in his. 

“ Will you come back to-night if I let her come 
up now? ” 

“Yes, I’ll come back to-night! ” 


CHAPTER XXXIX 


It was very dark. All the way as Eve hurried 
toward Stanley’s studio she was a thing not of brain, 
but of flaming emotion. She couldn’t think — she 
didn’t want to think ! She wanted to feel ! 

Everything that she had labored so hard to build 
up was slipping away from her. But she didn’t care 
if the whole world came to an end in another day so 
long as it gave her back in those last few hours the 
love that she had suffered for, the love that she must 
have ! 

What was success? What was fame? What 
was honor that made a slave of her, so long as her 
body could ache and tremble and thrill as it was 
aching and trembling and thrilling now ! 

What were scruples in the face of passion ? Noth* 
ing! Nothing — if the passion was only big 
enough ! 

And then, as though some violent poison were 
taking effect, her face and throat were suddenly con- 
torted with pain. A man came toward her from the 
opposite direction. It was Stanley. She was lost ! 
Now she could never turn back. She leaned, shud- 
dering, against the wall. 

271 


272 


THE GLORIOUS HOPE 


The man came abreast of her and passed on. He 
was not Stanley. 

Then, without warning, dead Marj and the Shep- 
herd and the Painter Man and the old heart-breaking 
life in the tenements swept back across her brain like 
a destructive cyclone. 

That would be what she would have to live through 
again if she went away with Stanley ! He wouldn’t 
work if he lived with her! He had said so! He 
would save all his energy for torturing and criticizing 
her ! She would ruin him again ! She would ruin 
herself! She would smash Bob’s glorious world 
into muddy bits ! And that wasn’t what she wanted 
of life ! That would be nothing short of a spiteful 
insanity. What she wanted of life was work and 
babies and peace ! What she wanted of life was the 
big constructive thing, the big love — the love that 
knew nothing of hate and anger and heart-breaking 
adjustments. What she wanted of life was Bob! 

She drew herself together and stumbled away, far 
away from the little street into the traffic of a 
crowded thoroughfare. 

THE END 


George Held, Albany and New York. 










